




































































































Copyright If 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 

































































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“CINDERS” 

THE YOUNG APPRENTICE OF THE 
STEEL MILLS 


BOOKS BY 

HUGH C. WEIR 

GREAT AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SERIES 


WITH THE FLAG IN PANAMA. A Story or the 

Building of the Panama Canal. 

Based upon the actual working out of the great engi¬ 
neering problems encountered in the construction of 
the Panama Canal, giving an accurate idea as to the size 
of the undertaking and the methods used in accomplish¬ 
ing its construction. A timely story, full of adventure 
and conveying much history of Panama itself. 

Fully illustrated. 356 pages. $1.50 

THE YOUNG SHIPPER OF THE GREAT LAKES. 

A Story of the Commerce of the Great Lakes. 

Full of thrilling incidents and having a vast amount 
of information in relation to the Great Lakes, their 
history and the extent of their commerce and how it is 
carried on. 

Colored Frontispiece. 325 pages. $1.00 net. 

“ CINDERS **—The Young Apprentice of the Steel 

Mills. 

The great steel industry has been the making of many 
an American boy. Through the experiences of “Cin¬ 
ders, ’ ’ the young apprentice, one will learn how wonder¬ 
ful the making of steel really is and also learn the 
history of that industry in this country. It is a story 
brim full of thrilling and actual experiences. 

Colored Frontispiece. 309 pages. $1.00 net. 




GREAT AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SERIES 


“CINDERS” 

The Young Apprentice of the Steel Mills 


By 

HUGH C. WEIR 


Illustrated by 

FRANK T. MERRILL 



W. A. WILDE COMPANY 


BOSTON 


CHICAGO 




P^7 

c 


Copyright, 1914 
By W. A. Wilde Company 
All rights reserved 




The Young 


OF THE 


JAN 15 1915 

& /.Ao 

©Cl. A391348 

k-Q/ 



TO 

DR. E. C. HAMILTON 

THAT GRAND OLD MAN OP SEVENTY-SIX 


WITH GRATEFUL THANKS FOR 
THE STIMULUS OF HIS 


SPLENDID LIFE 





FOREWORD 


“/BINDERS” is a story of the steel mills, and 
the third volume in the American Industries 
Series. In the two preceding volumes, “With 
the Flag in Panama ” and “The Young Shipper 
of the Great Lakes,” an effort was made to 
present a picture of two vital phases of modern 
industrial life — the digging of the great inter- 
oceanic waterway on the Isthmus, and the 
wonder stream of shipping of our inland seas. 
The present book carries forward the gen¬ 
eral purpose of the series, and presents the 
adventures of a young apprentice at a great 
steel plant. 

It is the aim of the series not only to tell a 
story, but to present the salient facts of those 
phases of our industrial life which have come 
to be the backbone of the nation. Much of the 
material for this purpose has been gathered 
first hand. Many of the characters have their 
counterparts in real life. In the present book, 
John Radcliff, the young superintendent of 


FOREWORD 


the American Steel Company, is drawn from 
a similar official of one of our large steel mills, 
whose climb from the bottom to the top of 
the ladder was as thrilling as that of his pro¬ 
totype in the story. 

If the author has succeeded in awakening 
the interest of his readers in the romance of 
Steel, and has left with them any of the stimu¬ 
lus of the great blast furnaces, his purpose 
will be achieved. Most of us look far afield 
for our romance and adventure. We do not 
realize that it is just at our doors, that the 
man in overalls and jumper is a greater hero 
than the man in the glittering uniform. Our 
industries of peace furnish us with more thrills 
than our battles of war. 

Incidentally it may not be amiss to state 
here that the fourth volume of this series is to 
deal with the romance of grain, and the story 
of our monster elevators. 


Hugh C. Weir. 
































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CINDERS 


CHAPTER ONE 

The Letter of the Afternoon Post 

JN after years Eric Raymond often marveled 

at the change which one hour of a certain 
October afternoon made in his life. It was as 
though the hour in question swept him over 
the border line between a happy-go-lucky 
boyhood and the responsibilities of a man. 

How well he remembered his gleeful shout 
as he burst into the little white and green cot¬ 
tage that he called home, and tossed his well- 
thumbed Geometry and Caesar onto the table 
in the living room as he caught brown-curled 
Ruth up from her dolls with a bearlike hug! 
Mrs. Raymond glanced up from her rocker 
with a smile as he bent over her with a smack¬ 
ing, boyish kiss. 

“You seem excited, Eric. What has hap¬ 
pened?” 

“You wouldn’t guess in a hundred years, 
Mumsy!” 


16 


CINDERS 


Eric threw his feet over a chair and rested 
his hands on its back, a favorite attitude of 
his whenever he was swayed by unusual emo¬ 
tion. 

To tell the truth, there was too great a 
supply of animal spirits in his make-up for 
him to sit quietly at all, unless when absolutely 
necessary. 

Mrs. Raymond surveyed his eager features 
with that quick understanding of boy nature 
which endeared her to her impulsive son. 

“Have you made the football eleven, or 
is it the Geometry test?” 

Eric laughed. 

“Both! How in the world did you know?” 

Mrs. Raymond reached over and stroked 
his hair. 

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much of a mother 
if I didn’t know the hopes of my boy. Tell 
me about it.” 

“Well, I am to play left half in next Satur¬ 
day’s game against Merrivale, and, if I don’t 
show that I am good enough to go in for the 
big Thanksgiving game, well, I’ll miss my guess, 
that’s all! And as for the ‘ Geom’ test, what do 
you think —I actually came through with 98 ! 


LETTER OF AFTERNOON POST 17 


And it is the highest in the class, too, Mumsy. 
Do you wonder that I am feeling good?” 

Mrs. Raymond’s eyes lighted. 

“No, indeed! And I feel almost as good 
as you do, Eric.” 

Ruth sprang [up from her semicircle of dolls 
and came dancing across the floor. 

“And will you take me out to the park Satur¬ 
day afternoon, mamma, to see Eric play?” 

“Of course she will, Toots!” returned Eric 
promptly. “And I’ll get you one of the high- 
school banners, and you’ll be my mascot!” 

“Really!” cried the little girl, gazing up 
at her brother with sparkling eyes. “Won’t 
that be scrumptious /” 

Eric pushed back his chair. 

“Oh, by the way, Mumsy, I met the postman 
outside, and he gave me a letter for you. I 
declare, I had almost forgotten it. And it came 
in the queerest kind of an envelope, all marked 
up with red ink. I guess it has been to the 
Dead Letter Office.” 

“You have aroused my curiosity,” said Mrs. 
Raymond as the boy fumbled in his coat pocket 
and extended the letter he had described. 

Eric turned back to the living-room table 


18 


CINDERS 


as his mother moved her chair nearer to the 
window and studied the address on the envel¬ 
ope. It was, indeed, a curious superscription. 
Quite evidently the letter had covered a long, 
circuitous journey before it reached its final 
destination, and had been forwarded and re¬ 
forwarded until in the handling of the mails 
its original post-mark was almost undecipher¬ 
able. 

As the journeyings of the letter followed 
closely the history of the Raymond family, 
perhaps this will be a good opportunity to 
introduce more in detail the members of the 
little household. 

To begin with, the thriving factory city of 
Benton, which had sprung up mushroom-like 
in the heart of the great steel district of north¬ 
ern Illinois, had not always been their home. 
Their residence in Benton had extended over 
a period of only nine years, when Mrs. Ray¬ 
mond had obtained her position as teacher 
in the public schools which she now held — 
and the slender salary of which formed the 
principal income of her two children and her¬ 
self. 

For nine years she had been the breadwinner 


LETTER OF AFTERNOON POST 19 


of the household. Ruth had never known her 
father. Eric remembered him only as a kind 
of strange dream. 

The youth had been a child of six when 
Ralph Raymond was selected by a large loco¬ 
motive works in Schenectady, New York, 
by which he was employed, to make one of 
two men to open a branch office for the exten¬ 
sion of its market in Lima, Peru. Mr. Ray¬ 
mond had planned to send for his wife and 
child as soon as he should be settled in his 
new field — a plan destined never to be carried 
out. 

Six months passed. One day Mrs. Raymond 
was summoned to the office of the locomotive 
factory. It was a rosy-faced, smilingly expect¬ 
ant woman who answered. It was a shrinking, 
haggard woman, who in an hour seemed to 
have lived years, that returned. 

When she caught the chubby Eric to her 
breast, she stood gazing down at him with an 
expression of such anguish that it penetrated 
even his child’s brain. 

“What is it, Mumsy?” he pleaded; “and 
where is Papa? Aren’t we going to him?” 

Mrs. Raymond’s lips quivered. 


20 


CINDERS 


“Oh, boy, boy!” she moaned. 

Eric slipped from her arms and pattered to 
the window, where he pointed out over the 
gray roofs of the city toward the winter’s sun. 

“Has Papa gone to Heaven, Mumsy?” 

There was no answer; Mrs. Raymond had 
swooned. 

For weeks she lay on the border line between 
life and death. When finally she struggled 
back to a shadow of her former self, a baby 
sister had come to Eric — roguish-eyed little 
Ruth. 

Of what had followed her summons to her 
husband’s factory Mrs. Raymond never spoke. 
Nor did she refer again to the plan for their 
long-anticipated journey to South America. 
The bedtime stories of the Andes and the 
wonders of Peru, with which she had regaled 
Eric, were abruptly dropped. In a vague way 
the boy realized that a great change had 
come in his mother’s life and his own. Dimly 
he came to know that the bronzed, broad- 
skouldered man, whose evening home-coming 
had always found the youngster in eager wel¬ 
come at the front gate, had gone — and that 
he would not return. 


LETTER OF AFTERNOON POST 21 


Had he been older, and more discerning, 
he would have wondered at the haunting 
sorrow which persisted in his mother’s eyes. 
It was a sorrow that even the sudden shock 
of her husband’s death could scarcely explain. 

If the significance of the fact escaped Eric, 
however, it did not escape the observation of 
the family’s friends and neighbors. 

“Mr. Raymond was killed with three others 
in a trestle accident in the mountains, where 
he was testing a new type of locomotive,” 
she had explained. 

“And those are all the details you have re¬ 
ceived?” was asked. 

Mrs. Raymond nodded wearily. 

“It was of course impossible to bring the 
body back to the coast.” 

There the subject had ended. Gradually 
distorted comments reached Mrs. Raymond’s 
ears, surmises as to the reason for her pro¬ 
tracted grief, doubts as to whether the full 
story of the far-off South American tragedy 
had been made public. The next week the 
Raymond family moved suddenly to Benton, 
Illinois, Mrs. Raymond’s girlhood home, where 
her application for employment as teacher 


22 CINDERS 

in the public schools had resulted in the offer 
of a position. 

With a Spartan-like heroism, Mrs. Ray¬ 
mond took up the battle with the world for 
her two children. To Ruth and Eric their 
mother seldom referred to the ruddy-faced 
man, whose picture hung always in the place 
of honor in their living room. To Ruth the 
fact, of course, had little significance. As 
Eric grew older, however, the reticence con¬ 
cerning his father struck him with a deepen¬ 
ing force. There was something in their home, 
something which he could not define, which 
made it different from the homes of his boy 
friends. 

Instinctively he came to regard it as a 
shadow, vague, sinister, the shadow of some¬ 
thing hidden, and to connect it with his father. 
Always it seemed to come from the old-fash¬ 
ioned picture in the living room. 

And the impression was the more pronounced 
because, as the years went on, he realized that 
his mother had never been the same since his 
father’s death. More than once, even in 
recent years, he had surprised her with her 
head buried in her arms. 


LETTER OF AFTERNOON POST 23 


On one such day he had boldly asked the 
reason for her emotion. Mrs. Raymond had 
received his question with a silence so prolonged 
that he was about to repeat it, when she turned 
with a weary gesture and took his hand. 

“Eric, you are rapidly growing to manhood. 
A few years more and you will indeed be a man. 
Until then, there are things which it is better 
that you should not know. It will give me 
nothing but pain for you to repeat your question 
until I feel that you are old enough to be given 
an explanation. If you love me, you will not 
refer to the subject again.” 

“Some day, Mumsy, then, I will know?” 

“Some day,” answered Mrs. Raymond 
gravely. 

This conversation had taken place two years 
before the opening of our story. In the main, 
they had been two uneventful years, years 
which had seen Eric’s entrance into the Benton 
High School, and which, with his restless love 
of outdoor sports, had already given promise 
of a sturdy physique soon to come. Indeed, 
at sixteen Eric Raymond was as well developed 
as most boys of eighteen, impulsive, perhaps 
to a fault, quick-tempered, but with a rare sym- 


24 


CINDERS 


pathetic quality which made him popular 
both among his fellow-students and his teachers. 

The advancing years, too, had emphasized 
a natural mechanical bent in the lad’s character, 
a love of machinery, a fondness for tinkering 
with all sorts of tools, which gave more than a 
hint of the course that his life’s work might 
be expected to take. Never was a boy so 
thoroughly in his element as he had been during 
his last summer vacation, when, with Mrs. 
Raymond’s reluctant consent, he had obtained 
employment as a helper in the plant of the 
Benton Forge Company. 

The factory was located just on the edge of 
the steel-mill district — a district which to 
Eric held all the lure of a region of enchant¬ 
ment. It was an impression intensified by the 
great mass of brown smoke, which seemed to 
hide the wonders beyond like a huge mountain. 
Eric knew, however, that the mountain was 
hollow — knew that the slender tongues of 
flames flashing through the smoke came from 
the throats of the Bessemer converters, the 
marvels of modern machinery, and that, some¬ 
where down under the smoke, weird monsters 
of iron and brick were vomiting boiling metal 


LETTER OF AFTERNOON POST 25 


in ten-ton streams — that about them six 
thousand men were at work, swinging, with the 
touch of a delicate lever, one-hundred-ton elec¬ 
tric cranes; feeding one-hundred-and-fifty-foot- 
high blast furnaces; harnessing torrents of 
flaming iron; rushing white-hot bowlders to 
the rail mill, the slabbing mill, the billet mill, 
or the blooming mill; facing death in a hundred 
forms that the world might have steel. 

It was a region, however, to which as yet 
Eric had never obtained admittance. The 
details of its wonders had remained a closed 
book, to be viewed from the outside, for the 
modern steel plant is one of the most dangerous 
institutions of American industries, and per¬ 
mits to visitors are not encouraged. Eric was 
determined that some day the closed gates 
should open to him, that he would explore 
their concealed mysteries, and perhaps even 
bear his part in the drama of the great furnaces. 

Perhaps, too — 

A gasp from the window, before which his 
mother was seated in the living room of the 
Raymond cottage, brought the lad around from 
the table. Mrs. Raymond had fallen back 
in her chair, with one hand clutching the letter 


26 


CINDERS 


of the afternoon post. As Eric sprang for¬ 
ward, she slipped full length onto the floor. 

“Mumsy!” he cried, sinking to his knees. 
Her white face stared up at him without 
response. Desperately he chafed her wrists 
as he continued to call her name. 

At his shoulders came a cry from Ruth as 
his sister caught sight of their mother’s body. 

“Get me some water,” the boy commanded, 
“and then run for a doctor! Quick!” 

Two wild questions were racing through his 
brain. Was his mother, dear, patient Mumsy, 
dead? 

Was it the curious letter which had struck 
her down? Mechanically he endeavored to 
slip her fingers from the crumpled paper she 
still held. But her grasp could not be loosened. 


CHAPTER TWO 

Eric Faces his First Crisis 

V\7HEN the physician, summoned by Ruth, 
arrived at the cottage ten minutes later, 
Mrs. Raymond was still lying where she had 
fallen. Eric had placed a pillow under her head 
and had continued his chafing of her wrists, but 
there had been no returning consciousness. 

Dr. Stebbins kneeled over her body and 
felt of her heart so long that Eric, unable to 
restrain himself, caught the physician’s shoulder. 
For the first time the imploring question in 
his mind voiced itself. 

“Is — is she dead, Doctor?” 

The physician glanced up impatiently, and 
then at sight of the boy’s pleading features 
his curtness vanished. 

“She is not dead — yet,” he answered kindly, 
“but it would be unwise to disguise from you 
that she is very, very ill. Are there any rela¬ 
tives or women friends that you can call?” 

“Yes, sir!” said the youth eagerly, leaping 


28 


CINDERS 


at even the faintest suggestion of hope, and 
finding a vague satisfaction in the prospect of 
active service. “ There is Mrs. Noraker in the 
next block. I know she will come at once.” 

The doctor nodded. 

“ Then get her as soon as possible!” He glanced 
across at Ruth. “Is there any place you can 
take your sister for the present?” 

Eric jammed his cap over his head. 

“She can go with me and stay with Sadie 
Noraker. Come on, Toots!” 

Of the details of the next two hours Eric 
afterward had only the memory of a night¬ 
mare, with his mother lying as motionless as 
though the hand of death had already reached 
across the fluttering thread of life. With Mrs. 
Noraker had come other neighbors, until the 
cottage contained a group of half a dozen 
solemnly whispering women. 

Mrs. Raymond had been carried to her bed¬ 
room and undressed by two of her friends. 
When Eric tiptoed fearfully to the door, he 
saw that the letter in his mother’s hand had 
been removed and laid on her dresser. 

For a moment the thought came to him to 
seize the opportunity to read the curious com- 


ERIC FACES FIRST CRISIS 29 


munication. Surely that which concerned his 
mother’s peace of mind so vitally concerned 
him also. And if there was a secret threatening 
her happiness, was he not old enough to help 
her share it? 

The remembrance of the nameless shadow 
in their home came back with vivid force. 
Was it striking again? He took a step toward 
the dresser, and then drew back. 

In his impulsiveness he had forgotten the 
other angle of the question. The letter, what¬ 
ever it contained, belonged not to himself, 
but to his mother. If she wished to take him 
into her confidence, she would do so in her own 
good time. Until then — his eyes filled as 
he glanced at the bed. It would be almost 
sacrilege to take advantage of her helplessness, 
to probe now into that which she had always 
kept from him. The thought, however, sug¬ 
gested a phase of the subject which he was 
almost overlooking. If there was that in his 
mother’s life which she had not seen fit to 
divulge to him, surely she would not wish 
others to know of it. And at any moment a 
curious eye might fall on the letter so carelessly 
displayed. It must be concealed. 


30 


CINDERS 


Crossing the room, he thrust the folded paper 
into a drawer of the dresser, locked it, and 
dropped the key into his pocket. 

With a sigh he made his way back to the 
living room. It was still light. Wonderingly 
he saw that it was only a little past four. 
Scarcely an hour had elapsed since he had 
entered the house on his merry return from 
school. It seemed to him that an eternity had 
passed —- that he was already viewing the 
school triumphs, which had meant so much 
to him earlier in the day, as something far off. 
It was as though a gulf separated the Eric 
Raymond of the morning from the youth who 
was moodily staring out of the cottage window. 
He turned with a sudden nervousness. 

The low-toned conversation of the neigh¬ 
borhood women grated on his ears. There 
was something grimly solemn in their stiff 
attitudes and the dissecting glances he felt 
bent toward him. The pail of death might 
have already descended over the house. He 
had the uncomfortable impression that he 
was on public exhibition — that the group was 
surveying him with much the same curiosity 
he had seen directed toward a South Sea Island 


ERIC FACES FIRST CRISIS 31 


native whom a returned missionary had once 
brought to their church. It was good of the 
neighbors to come, of course, but — his whole 
nature was crying out to be alone for a chance 
to adjust himself to the new problem that 
had come to him. 

Pausing only long enough to catch a somber 
shake of the head from Dr. Stebbins that his 
mother’s condition was unchanged, he seized 
his cap and swung out of the house. 

The Raymond cottage was located in what 
was called the east end of Benton, one of the 
newer residence suburbs, filled mostly with 
unpretentious homes and populated by the 
better class of workingmen, who found em¬ 
ployment in the local factories. Although 
the house was situated at a considerable dis¬ 
tance from her school, Mrs. Raymond had 
rented it because of an unusually large yard 
and the opportunities for outdoor play that it 
afforded Ruth, and Eric, too, in his younger 
days. 

Only a short distance beyond the city limits 
ended, and the fields of the country began. 
Hardly realizing where his steps led him, Eric 
took no heed of his course until he glanced up 


32 


CINDERS 


with a start to find himself on a rural road fully 
a mile from the edge of Benton. His brisk pace 
and the cool evening breeze had reduced his 
pulse to normal, and the feverish flush had 
disappeared from his face. 

More slowly he turned and retraced his path. 
He was conscious that he was facing the first 
crisis of his life. Granting that Mrs. Raymond 
recovered, it did not need a physician to know 
that her health was certain to be more or less 
seriously affected. There loomed then, with 
alarming emphasis, the question which confronts 
every family of similar circumstances in a 
sudden catastrophe — the question of a bread¬ 
winner. And Eric was well enough acquainted 
with the size of his mother’s slender savings 
to know that the question would have to be 
answered at once. 

At the reflection his shoulders stiffened. The 
mother who had toiled for her boy so long and 
so heroically would have to look to him now 
in her emergency. That is, if the stupor in 
which he had left her did not prove, indeed, 
the shadow of death! 

Eric’s steps quickened again as the cottage 
came into view. At the gate he paused half 


ERIC FACES FIRST CRISIS 33 


fearfully, searching the darkened windows of 
his mother’s room, as though beyond the lowered 
blinds he might read a hint of the dread tidings 
awaiting him. It was by an effort that he 
opened the door and entered. 

Dr. Stebbins was packing his medical case, 
preparatory to leaving. Most of the women 
from the neighborhood had already gone. 

“Your mother has regained consciousness,” 
said the doctor, and then, catching the boy’s 
arm as Eric made an impulsive step toward 
the bedroom, he lowered his voice: “She is 
sleeping. Everything will depend now on 
absolute quiet.” 

“There is someone with her?” asked Eric. 

The doctor nodded. 

“I think it best to send up a trained nurse 
to-night.” He gazed at the boy hesitatingly. 
“Are there no relatives that you can summon?” 

Eric shook his head. Of his father’s family 
he had heard little, and except for a married 
sister in California his mother had no imme¬ 
diate connections. 

“I am afraid I will have to get along as best 
I can by myself,” he said slowly. “If you can 
get a nurse for mother, I think I can manage. 


34 CINDERS 

I can leave Ruth at Mrs. Noraker’s for the 
present.” 

The doctor bent a sudden glance toward the 
boy’s grave features. 

“It’s a big responsibility, my lad. If there 
is anything I can do for you —” 

Eric flushed. 

“No, thank you! Mother has always pro¬ 
vided for a rainy day, although I don’t know 
how far her savings will go. But I would be 
a pretty poor sort of a boy if I couldn’t find 
something to do to take care of her.” 

The physician’s glance again swept his face. 

“The doctor isn’t as hard-crusted as a good 
many people suppose. If you need any sug¬ 
gestions, or advice, I will be glad to be of ser¬ 
vice. I’ll look in on your mother later.” 

Eric glanced through the doorway of his 
mother’s darkened room, saw that one of the 
neighbors was watching at her bedside, and 
then, thinking of Ruth, took his cap again and 
departed for the Norakers’. 

A warm intimacy had existed for several 
years between the two families. Indeed, it 
was through the agency of Mr. Noraker, who 
was one of the foremen of the forge factory. 


ERIC FACES FIRST CRISIS 35 


that Eric had obtained his previous summer’s 
employment. And the intimacy was strength¬ 
ened by the fact that among the three Noraker 
-children was one of Eric’s classmates, and 
closest chum, barely two months his senior. 
Tom Noraker’s good-natured face answered his 
knock. Seizing Eric’s hand, the other pulled 
him into the house. 

“You are just in time for supper, Eric. And 
we’ve got the biggest, brownest jar of baked 
beans you ever saw. Sit down while I tell 
mother to put on an extra plate for you.” 

Eric shook his head as Ruth came running 
to his arms. “I can’t stop now, Tom; I’m afraid 
I’ll be needed at the house. Mumsy may 
wake up any minute, you know, and I shouldn’t 
like her to find me gone.” 

Mrs. Noraker, a sweet-faced woman, from 
whom it was evident Tom had inherited his 
infectious smile, bustled into the room in time 
to hear his reply. 

“If you feel that way, Eric, you’ll have to 
let me put up a basket for you. Now don’t 
say a word! A healthy boy has to eat, and I 
know just how the kitchen at your house would 
look if you try to get your own supper. I’ll 


36 


CINDERS 


be down before bedtime to see how things are, 
and you are to come up here for your breakfast 
in the morning. No, it will not be a bit of 
trouble. I’d like to know what I’m for if it 
isn’t to lend a helping hand when it is needed!” 

Eric’s eyes dimmed. 

“I wish I knew how I could thank you, Mrs. 
Noraker!” 

“By sitting down in this chair until mother 
has your basket ready,” cried Tom, playfully, 
forcing him into a rocker. “I say, Eric, Dens- 
more was talking to a lot of us about the team 
after you left,” he continued in an effort to 
divert the other’s thoughts. “And you ought 
to have heard the compliment he paid you! 
Why, he thinks that you are the equal of —” 

He broke off at a sudden change in Eric’s 
face. 

“I am afraid, Tom,” said Eric slowly, 
“that I’ll have to leave the team.” 

“Leave the team! In the name of goodness, 
why?” 

Eric flushed. 

“Can’t you see what mother’s illness means? 
I’ll have to leave school and go to work; take 
her place in supporting the family — if I can.” 


ERIC FACES FIRST CRISIS 37 


Tom stared, and then pushed back his chair. 

“Fm sorry, Eric! I am afraid I have made 
a mess in trying to cheer you up. But that’s 
just like me, always saying the wrong thing —” 

“Don’t worry about that ,” rejoined Eric, 
trying to smile at the other’s woeful look. 
“I’m not sure but that I ought to leave school 
anyway. Somehow it doesn’t look just right for 
a boy of sixteen to let his mother work as hard 
as mine has worked to support him, even to 
get an education. I am beginning to feel, 
Tom, that I have been drifting along without 
thinking as much as I should have done. 
When — when I saw dear old Mumsy lying there 
to-night, so still and white, and — and — 
thought —” 

Eric turned his head away. A curious 
lump was rising in his throat, which he had to 
swallow persistently to dislodge. 

From the kitchen doorway Mrs. Noraker 
advanced with a white-covered basket. Plac¬ 
ing it on the table, she threw her arm around 
Eric’s shoulders and kissed his astonished lips. 

“I couldn’t help it!” she cried. “If your 
mother had heard you, Eric, she would have 
been proud of you. And now, hurry up,” 


38 


CINDERS 


she broke off as a suspicious moisture gathered 
in her own eyes, “or your supper will be so 
cold you can’t eat it. I’ll be over as soon as 
I can.” 

“And I’ll come with her,” called Tom, as 
Eric rather hastily gathered up his load, con¬ 
scious that his face was flaming. 

For a moment after the door had closed 
the lad stood gazing up at the star-dotted sky, 
blue and far-away through the autumn haze. 
What a day it had been! He drew a deep breath. 
And what would the next day bring in his 
suddenly altered life? 


CHAPTER THREE 

A Note and its Answer 

JN periods of great mental stress, the sense 
of time is often blurred and confused. One 
loses count of hours, so that the passage of 
even a single day may stand out as though it 
had been multiplied indefinitely. It is as if 
old Father Time had set back his clock, or 
perhaps tied a double weight to the pendulum. 

Afterwards Eric Raymond found it almost 
impossible to realize that barely three days 
elapsed between the afternoon of his mother’s 
prostration and the evening when the mingled 
stupor and fever that had followed abated. 

The nurse, whom Dr. Stebbins had sent 
to the cottage, had left the room to prepare 
a broth, and Eric had taken her post by his 
mother’s bedside. A slight pressure of Mrs. 
Raymond’s hand drew his glance to her pillow. 
The gleam of the fever and the stupor, which 
had broken her periods of delirium, had gone. 


40 


CINDERS 


With a cry, Eric dropped to liis knees and 
threw his arms around her shoulders. 

“Mumsy !” 

Mrs. Raymond smiled wanly. “How — 
how long have I been ill?” she whispered. 

“Oh, not long,” Eric answered vaguely. 
“And you’re going to be up again now in a 
jiffy! We can’t afford to have as good a mother 
as you are stay sick, you know.” 

He pushed back his chair. “I’ll call Nurse. 
We’ve got a real nurse for you, and you ought 
to see her! She’s the best—” He stopped. 

His mother’s hands were trembling, and she 
made a movement as though to raise herself. 
He divined that the remembrance of the fateful 
letter had flashed to her. 

Reaching into his pocket he produced the 
key with which he had locked the commu¬ 
nication in the dresser drawer. 

Mrs. Raymond watched him eagerly. 

“The letter, Eric, the letter that you gave 
me — have, have you put it away?” 

He nodded. He could feel his mother’s 
eyes searching his face. 

Mrs. Raymond’s lips moved finally. 

“And, and — did you read it?” 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 41 


Eric shook his head, flushing as he recalled 
the temptation that had come to him. 

“No, Mumsy. You will find it in your dresser 
when you want it.” 

Mrs. Raymond’s eyes closed with a sigh. He 
hesitated, and then continued suddenly. 

“You remember, Mumsy, that some time ago 
I asked you a question and you told me that 
some day you would answer it? Wouldn’t it 
help you to take me into your confidence 
now: 

Mrs. Raymond opened her eyes, and then 
turned her head and gazed out of the white- 
curtained window. 

“No, Eric,” she said at last; “the time 
has not yet come.” She was still staring 
through the window. 

At the sight of 'her contracted face Eric’s 
hands tightened. 

“Did the letter have to do with that which 
has been worrying you all these years?” he 
persisted. 

He reached over and stroked back his mother’s 
hair. She drew him down until her lips met his. 

“Forgive me, Mumsy, but I am so anxious 
to help you! If there is anything — ” 


42 


CINDERS 


“I know, Eric. Don’t you think my mother’s 
heart tells me that? But you must not ask 
me now! You must not, my boy!” 

A step sounded from the doorway, and the 
nurse bustled into the room. Eric drew back 
reluctantly. It was as though an unseen hand 
had come between his mother and himself. 
Moodily he turned at a sign from the nurse 
and left her alone with her patient. 

What was the shadow that could endure 
through all these years and strike down his 
mother so suddenly? What was the burden 
that she insisted on bearing alone? 

There had never been any hidden things 
between his mother and himself — that is, 
with the exception of this. 

Mrs. Raymond had entered into the hopes 
and struggles and disappointments of his boy¬ 
hood with a sympathy and appreciation of 
his impulsive nature that had made her the 
first repository of his confidences. The bond 
between the two had been so deep, so unbroken, 
that her present attitude came with all the 
greater emphasis. Would the day ever come 
when he would know the explanation? Would 
the shadow in her life, whatever its import. 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 48 


be raised, and would it be given to him to help 
remove it? 

There was an even more immediate question, 
however — the increasing question of income 
for the household. 

Even the three days of Mrs. Raymond’s 
illness showed how fast the expenses of the 
situation, no matter how economically managed, 
might eat into their modest bank account. 
With the uncertainty of his mother’s condition, 
Eric had lived the three days in a suspense 
too poignant to admit of thought of the future. 
His every faculty had been riveted on the 
drama in the sick-room. Now, however, a 
decisive step was imperative. That evening, 
after a conversation with Dr. Stebbins, he 
made it. • 

“Your mother will undoubtedly be confined 
to her bed for two or three weeks, even granting 
that she takes no turn for the worse,” said the 
physician as he emerged from her room. “And 
after that, absolute rest for some months 
will be necessary for a complete recovery. 
In fact, in her condition, after such a shock to 
her nervous system, a long sojourn in a sani- 
torium would be advisable.” 


44 


CINDERS 


He bent a shrewd glance on the lad. 

“I should say that your mother had been 
working much too hard, and has been confined 
too closely; but, of course, that is not the pri¬ 
mary reason for her illness. Do you know of any 
sudden mental blow that she has received?” 

Eric hesitated, and then realized that he 
could truthfully answer the question in the 
negative. He was not familiar with the nature 
of the blow. 

“No, sir, I am afraid she hasn’t been in the 
best of health for some time.” 

Dr. Stebbins looked dubious, but closed his 
medical case without further comment. 

After his departure Eric made his way to 
the Noraker s’. 

“Mr. Noraker,” he said, coming to his 
errand at once, “I want to find work. Can 
you help me?” 

Mr. Noraker laid down his evening newspaper 
and glanced at the boy kindly. Eric had al¬ 
ways been a favorite of his. 

“Why, I will do anything that I can, of 
course. I’m afraid, though, that you have 
struck a bad season at the forge factory. We 
laid off ten men last month indefinitely.” 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 45 


“I was not thinking of the forge factory 
exactly/’ said Eric thoughtfully. “I thought 
perhaps I might find an opening at the steel 
mills. You know, it has always been my am¬ 
bition to enter one of the plants and learn the 
business from the ground up.” 

“You have set me a harder problem than 
I would find at our own place, my boy,” replied 
Mr. Noraker. “I understand that there are 
always more applicants for apprenticeship at 
the steel mills than they can possibly use. 
And, besides, there is a sort of unwritten rule 
that the families of the present employes 
shall always have first chance at any vacancies. 
Once a steel man, they say, always a steel man. 
There seems to be a fascination about the 
furnaces —” 

“That’s just it!” Eric broke in. “It must 
be one of the greatest things in the world to 
work in the neighborhood of all that wonder¬ 
ful machinery. Why, if I could get a chance 
to be a steel man, I — I —why, I would do 
almost anything!” 

Mr. Noraker smiled. 

“In your enthusiasm, I fear you are forgetting 
that there is something besides the inspiration 


46 


CINDERS 


of marvelous machinery in the making of steel. 
For instance, it is one of the most dangerous 
industries in existence.” He fixed his eyes 
on the youth’s flushed features. “Do you 
know that there is a man killed or seriously 
injured in American steel mills every day — 
not to mention the hundreds of minor acci¬ 
dents?” 

“But on the other hand,” protested Eric, 
“think of the satisfaction of having even a 
small part in such an industry! Why, steel 
is the biggest subject in this country. I have 
often thought that the men who make it 
must feel a good deal like soldiers on a battle¬ 
field. I was reading the other day that the 
United States produces enough steel in three 
years to outweigh the whole population of 
the globe. And in one year this country 
makes enough steel to form a belt ten feet wide 
and an inch thick around the world. Just 
imagine what would happen if the making 
of steel should stop even for a month!” 

“I say, Eric, you have been cramming!” 
cried Tom. “I couldn’t remember those 
figures five minutes.” 

“But then you haven’t the ambition to be 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 47 


a steel man,” said his father dryly. “Eric 
is right. Steel is the biggest industrial sub¬ 
ject that we have to-day. He might have 
added that in a little over a generation it 
has made a thousand millionaires, and that 
the pay-roll of the United States Steel Corpo¬ 
ration alone runs to a million dollars a week.” 

“If I thought that there was a chance for 
me among the next thousand millionaires,” 
interjected Tom, “I believe I would be a steel 
man, too.” 

“I fancy you would find it a hard struggle 
before you reached that list,” laughed Mr. 
Noraker. “Money doesn’t grow on bushes in 
the steel industry any more than in any other 
industry. It is made only by hard work and 
ability. Practically every big man in steel 
wore overalls and carried a dinner bucket 
when he started.” 

He moved his chair close to the living-room 
table and drew paper and ink toward him. 

“If you really are determined to try your 
luck at the steel mills, Eric, I will give you 
a note to a friend of mine, who is one of the 
assistant foremen of the American Company. 
If there is a chance for you, I know he will 


48 


CINDERS 


tell you about it at once. But you had better 
save your thanks/’ he added as Eric broke in. 
“You must remember that even if there is an 
opening there may be two or three dozen 
applicants ahead of you.” 

Mr. Noraker finished his note and addressed 
it. “I would suggest that you present this at 
noon. Then Mr. Howard will have time 
to talk to you. During working hours you 
would probably find trouble in securing ad¬ 
mittance to him.” He extended his hand. 

“Good luck, my boy! You might drop in 
to-morrow evening and let me hear how you 
come out.” 

“And let us congratulate you if you have 
taken your first step toward becoming a steel 
millionaire,” added Tom, grinning, as he pre¬ 
pared to accompany his friend home. 

“I will!” promised Eric. He little dreamed, 
however, of the strange situation in which he 
was destined to find himself the next evening; 
nor how little opportunity he would have to 
redeem his promise. 

Eric Raymond would not have been human 
had he left home the following morning with 
any but the most glowing anticipations as to 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 49 


the result of his errand. There was a spring 
in his step, and an assurance in his eyes, that 
could not have been more in evidence had a 
position already been offered to him. Youth 
is the period of optimism. 

Mrs. Raymond had passed a hopeful night, 
and had dropped off again into a light slumber 
before Eric left the cottage. The lad was 
rather thankful for the fact. He had planned 
to say nothing to his mother of his purpose 
until he had something definite to report. 
Instinctively he felt that she would at once 
combat his intention of leaving school, and 
might even insist that he continue at his studies, 
and endeavor to devise some sort of sacrifice 
to enable him to do so. And the time was 
over for her to make sacrifices! He was deter¬ 
mined on that. 

A quarter of an hour’s brisk walk was quite 
sufficient to carry him to the boundary of 
the steel district and the zone of the long 
smoke-enveloped plants, which his boyish im¬ 
agination had always viewed as a modern 
Aladdin’s land. In fact, there were two steel 
districts in Benton, almost overlapping one 
another. 


50 


CINDERS 


They could not have been more completely 
isolated from each other, however, had a wall 
separated them. One was the property of the 
American Steel Company, in industrial parlance 
belonging to the “Independents.” The other 
represented an outpost of the great steel com¬ 
bination, called the “Trust.” The battles 
between the two, fought with dollars and 
not bullets, were often as stirring as the battles 
of war times. Eric had devoured the ac¬ 
counts of their clashes in the local newspapers, 
and it was characteristic of him that from the 
first he had given completely and voluntarily 
his allegiance to the cause of the Independents. 
Never did veteran steel magnate thrill more 
at a hard-won victory than did Eric Raymond 
at every gain of the American Steel Plant, gains 
which were achieved only by the most adroit 
tactics, for it faced a foe that never slept, and 
which was constantly on the lookout for the 
slightest vantage-point of attack. 

It was, therefore, with something of a spirit 
of familiarity, however remote, that Eric ex¬ 
tended his letter of introduction to the warden 
at the central gates of the American Company 
and asked that it be delivered to Mr. Howard. 


A NOTE AND ITS ANSWER 51 


The noon whistles had already sounded, and 
a stream of workmen, residing near enough 
to eat dinner at home, was pouring out from the 
long buildings beyond. 

Eric watched them eagerly. Why, many 
of them seemed scarcely older than boys, and 
he was confident that there were at least two 
who did not exceed his own age. He had yet 
to learn that steel is an industry of young men 
— that it is a taskmaster before whose relentless 
demands only a vigorous constitution can stand. 
Old age has no place in the steel mills. 

The guardian at the gate, who had taken 
his letter, called to Eric suddenly. He had 
been joined by a second man. The lad stepped 
forward with a quickening of his pulse. At 
last he was to be admitted to the region where 
had centered so many of his dreams. Doubtless 
Mr. Howard had sent word to show him in. 

“You are the boy with the note to Mr. John 
Howard?” 

“Yes, sir,” answered Eric eagerly. “Can he 
see me: 

The man looked at him with a peculiar gravity. 

“Mr. Howard was killed at ten o’clock this 
morning,” he said slowly. 


CHAPTER FOUR 

The Role of Chance 

QO unexpected was the announcement that 
^ Eric clung to the gate. 

“Killed!” he gasped. 

The man, who had received his letter, 
shrugged. 

“ Blast furnace explosion,” he said lacon¬ 
ically. “Three men were caught in it.” He 
shrugged again. 

Eric stared. The man had spoken in as 
matter-of-fact a tone as though tragedies claim¬ 
ing three victims were routine incidents. For 
the first time the lad was beginning to sense 
something of the toll which the octopus Steel 
demands of men in return for the power that 
it gives them. 

The man stepped back. 

“Mr. Howard’s body was taken to his home. 
If you want to go over you will find his house 
at the corner of Green and Locust streets.” 

Eric drew a deep breath. 


THE ROLE OF CHANCE 


53 


“My business with him was not of a personal 
nature exactly.” 

The casual spirit with which the other re¬ 
ferred to the accident had intensified rather 
than lessened its shock. In after-days the 
lad was to learn that familiarity breeds con¬ 
tempt even toward death — that the men 
who labor shoulder to shoulder with danger in 
the day’s work become dulled, as it were, 
to its presence. The same is true of the soldier 
in the heat of battle. He shrugs at the bullet 
which would send the man at home to his feet 
in a panic. And yet transplant the soldier 
to the metropolitan crossing, whose clanging 
traffic the peaceful city dweller threads with¬ 
out a thought of peril, and he will tremble 
with nervousness. 

“If you don’t mind,” cried Eric as the 
man at the gate moved away, “perhaps you 
can help me. My letter to Mr. Howard was 
in regard to securing work. Can you tell me 
where to apply for employment?” 

The other paused. 

“I say, youngster, for a tenderfoot I like 
your grit. So you are not scared off, eh?” 

Eric flushed. 


54 


CINDERS 


“I’m not particularly anxious to be killed, 
of course, but I would like a chance at an ap¬ 
prentice job, if there is anything open.” 

The man grinned. “If you will wait here 
I will drop over to the Employment Bureau 
and see what the boss has to say. Perhaps I 
had better take your note to John Howard 
with me.” 

“Thank you!” said Eric, “I will be glad 
to wait.” 

He turned from the gate and stared about 
him curiously. Bordering the wall was a 
hard-packed, open tract of ground running 
down to the private switch-tracks of the com¬ 
pany. Across a narrow street, which fronted 
it, extended a dingy block of restaurants, 
pool rooms, cheap boarding houses, and gaudily 
painted saloons, the latter supplying the only 
points of color in the drab scene. 

Even to Eric’s inexperienced eyes, however, 
it was apparent that among the throng of 
workmen, rapidly filling the street and the 
open stretch of ground, those congregated in 
the neighborhood of the saloons were of the 
more shiftless and slovenly type. 

The alert-featured, clean-cut men, whom 


THE ROLE OF CHANCE 


55 


he judged to represent the skilled class of labor 
in the mill, avoided the glaringly painted 
saloon doors almost without exception. 

The scene would have impressed a much less 
observing youth than Eric Raymond. 

In the crowd before him were a dozen dif¬ 
ferent nationalities — oily-featured, gesticulat¬ 
ing Italians, shuffling, muddy-faced Greeks, 
heavy-eyed, squat-shouldered Polocks; bushy- 
whiskered Russians; stolid Germans, puffing 
silently on long-stemmed pipes; blue-eyed, fair- 
complexioned Scandinavians; and, outnumber¬ 
ing them all, brisk-moving, nervous-tempered 
Americans, who regarded their neighbors from 
over the seas with a good-natured grin at 
their national mannerisms. 

Apart, too, from the varied nationalities 
represented in the cosmopolitan throng, there 
were other points of interest. 

The trail of the roaring furnaces stood out 
prominently. It was as though the hopper of 
the mills had left its mark on almost every 
one of the army of workmen whom it drew 
into its depths — shoulders bent in an unnat¬ 
ural stoop, faces flushed a strange brick-red 
from the .constant heat of the molten metal. 


56 


CINDERS 


blistered with jagged burns, or criss-crossed 
with curious scars. 

But there was that in the throng, more sig¬ 
nificant than even the shadow of physical 
suffering exacted in the reaping of the world’s 
steel harvest. 

This was an almost indefinable glow of 
optimism, of buoyancy reflected in the most 
stoical face and the most badly maimed figure. 
For a long time Eric was not able to understand 
its cause. 

Gradually he came to know that it was the 
spirit of conquest, the thrill of victory over the 
great driving trip-hammers, the giant cranes, 
the roaring furnaces. Men had harnessed 
them, and put them to work, and made them 
do their bidding. And if, in retaliation, they 
struck at their master at the slightest opening 
in his guard, and reaped their vengeance in 
mangled victims, they were none the less 
slaves of the human will. 

Even the lowest apprentice, although, of 
course, he could not explain it, seemed to imbibe 
this idea of man-made power. It was a part 
of the atmosphere of the plant, the real fas¬ 
cination of the steel-maker. 


THE ROLE OF CHANCE 57 

Eric turned eagerly as the voice of the gate- 
man sounded again at his shoulders. 

“I’m afraid, my boy, there is no chance for 
you.” 

“But I am willing to take almost any kind 
of place to get a start,” Eric protested. “And 
you will find I won’t balk at hard work.” 

“I believe that,” said the other kindly. “But 
the apprentice list is full up, and there are over 
a dozen applicants waiting for the first opening 
— most of them sons of mill men, who, of course, 
would be given a preference. Perhaps later 
on though —” 

“It is a case with me of finding work now,” 
said Eric gloomily. He drew back reluctantly. 
“I’m much obliged to you though.” 

“I’m sorry I am not able to do you any good,” 
rejoined the gateman. “Luck to you, any¬ 
way.” 

Eric smiled faintly. He should have expected 
to find difficulties in his way — and he was al¬ 
lowing himself to be discouraged at the very 
first setback! How much of a success could he 
expect to make if he was that easily dismayed? 

He puckered his lips and forced them into 
a whistle as he moved away, conscious that 


58 


CINDERS 


there was little music and less optimism in 
the sound. At the end of a block, however, 
his notes had grown stronger and steadier, 
and something like the old sparkle had returned 
to his eyes. Certainly the big men in the 
steel industry, who had begun with a work¬ 
man’s dinner bucket, had found a start some¬ 
where. If they had done so, surely he could 
find a beginning, too! 

Perhaps Mr. Noraker could suggest another 
channel of approach. His steps quickened at 
the thought. Why not call on him at the fac¬ 
tory instead of waiting to see him at home that 
evening? 

The forge plant was located on the other 
edge of the steel district, and the most direct 
route to it lay through the business part of 
town. Eric changed his course, determined 
to put the suggestion into immediate execu¬ 
tion. The whistles closing the factory noon 
hour had already sounded, but he was confident 
that Mr. Noraker would give him a welcome 
at any time. 

Turning up Mound Street he branched into 
Main Street near the Public Square, so occu¬ 
pied with his thoughts that it was with a start 


THE ROLE OF CHANCE 


59 


that he found himself in the retail section of 
the city. The post-office clock clanged out 
a long solitary stroke. One o’clock! A quarter 
of an hour would carry him to his destination. 
He swerved his steps to the edge of the curb 
at the Metropolitan Hotel, where a crew of 
workmen engaged in the remodeling of the 
entrance had temporarily blocked the side¬ 
walk. As he did so his eyes caught the gleam 
of silver on the pavement. At his feet lay a 
sterling-mounted pocketbook. He stooped 
toward it, conscious that it had dropped from 
the handbag of an elderly, fashionably dressed 
lady who was just turning into the side entrance 
of the hotel. 

He sprang after her. The liveried attendant 
at the door had closed it again before he reached 
it, and as he stepped into the corridor beyond, 
he saw the object of his quest pausing before the 
elevator. With a flush he hurried to her side. 
The lady received the purse with a little cry of 
surprise. 

Eric raised his cap at her smile of thanks 
and stepped back. He was grateful that she 
offered no hint of reward. He did not know 
there was that in his face which lifted him 


60 


CINDERS 


above the suggestion of payment for the 
service of courtesy. 

It was a trivial incident, but it is on just such 
trivial incidents that the thread of our lives 
sometimes hangs. Had not Eric Raymond 
entered the Metropolitan Hotel at that particu¬ 
lar hour, or had he returned at once to the 
street, the whole course of his career might 
have been altered. 

It was the prompting, of a boyish curiosity 
in the newly decorated lobby that slackened 
his steps and drew him to one of the circling 
leather seats surrounding the marble pillars 
of the rotunda. With a little sigh at the un¬ 
accustomed atmosphere of luxury he ventured 
to lower himself onto its gratefully soft cush¬ 
ions. 

For a few moments he gazed about him, 
drinking in the novel details of the scene. 
He aroused himself with an effort, conscious 
that he was lagging in the errand that he had 
set himself. He yawned deliciously, wondering 
if the homes of the steel millionaires resembled 
the lobby of the Metropolitan Hotel. 

And then every nerve in his body seemed 
to leap to a tension. During his survey of 


THE ROLE OF CHANCE 


61 


the rotunda he had been vaguely aware of the 
low hum of voices from the other side of the 
pillar. Even as he was in the act of rising 
they crystallized into a sentence that brought 
him back to his seat gasping. 


CHAPTER FIVE 

Eric Beards the Lion in his Den 

^pHE elaborately furnished rotunda of the 
hotel, and the smoke-grimmed steel plant 
that Eric had just left, were scenes as far apart 
in points of common interest, one would think, 
as the poles. Had the youth been asked five 
minutes before to find any connecting link 
between the two he would have considered it 
impossible. And yet the sentence that met his 
ears from behind the pillar dove-tailed the 
luxurious rotunda and the smudgy steel mills 
abruptly. 

The sentence in question was the elated 
declaration, spoken with an emotion that car¬ 
ried it farther than the speaker evidently 
realized: 

“Then if the gentleman makes good to¬ 
night, we will have the American people prac¬ 
tically at our mercy!” 

A chuckle in a metallic tone followed, and 
then an impatient caution from the person to 
whom the sentence had been addressed. Eric 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 


63 


strained his ears, but he could distinguish 
nothing further. He slipped from his seat 
and strolled down the rotunda for the purpose 
of obtaining a view of the speakers. It must be 
confessed that there was no definite idea in his 
mind beyond the establishing of the source 
from which had come the strange fragment 
of confidential dialogue. The significance of 
the situation had not yet impressed him. 

Turning at a distance of perhaps a dozen 
steps he faced about, taking care not to ex¬ 
hibit too much eagerness. The opposite side 
of the pillar was now in plain view. On its 
cushioned seat were two men. The one nearest 
to him was a grizzled-haired man, with a short 
stubby mustache, nervously smoking a long 
black cigar. 

His companion was a more slightly built, 
younger man, with a clean-shaven face and 
close-cut black hair. There was a pressure in 
his thin lips, which even to Eric’s scanty knowl¬ 
edge of the world hinted at a peculiar crafti¬ 
ness. He divined that it was from him that 
the sentence he had overheard had come. 

Apparently the couple were unaware of the 
presence of an unconscious eavesdropper. 


64 


CINDERS 


Hardly had Eric turned when they rose to 
their feet and made their way to the clerk’s 
desk at the other end of the lobby. Eric watched 
them uncertainly. After leaving an apparent 
direction with the young man at the desk, they 
reversed their steps and, resuming their low- 
toned conversation, swung toward the side 
exit of the building. On a sudden impulse 
he strolled after them. 

When he reached the door the two were 
approaching a motor car, whose chauffeur drew 
the machine to the curb at sight of their figures. 
As Eric stepped onto the walk, the elder of the 
couple sprang into the car with a surprising 
agility for his age. The younger man remained 
on the curb. 

Eric continued on across the walk, as though 
interested in the mechanism of an untenanted 
automobile adjoining the car he was watching. 
Apparently neither of the two men thought 
that he was worthy of attention. As the chauf¬ 
feur turned his wheel, the man on the walk 
stepped back with a shrug. 

“I will meet you at ‘The Oaks’ to-night 
then, at nine!” 

Over his shoulder Eric saw the speaker turn 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 


65 


briskly down the street and disappear through 
the doorway of the Lenox office building. 
The lad thrust his hands into his pockets with 
a frown. Gradually the import of the situation 
was making itself felt. That there was a hidden 
meaning in the sentences he had overheard 
there could be no doubt. And it was equally 
certain that, whatever its nature, it foreboded 
catastrophe to the company where he had 
unsuccessfully applied for employment. 

He was well enough acquainted with the 
public details of the steel situation and the 
struggles of the American Steel Company to 
know that its competitors were constantly 
on the lookout for methods to check its prog¬ 
ress. Were the two men who had emerged from 
the hotel connected with the Trust? He gave 
an involuntary whistle at the suggestion. 

If this were the case, he had stumbled on 
information of value indeed, information which 
might even be the means of forearming the 
American Steel Company. 

But how should he reach the proper officials 
with his story? What steps should he take 
to insure his knowledge gaining the ears of the 
men who could appreciate its meaning? 


66 


CINDERS 


He flushed. Would he not have his trouble 
for his pains? The chances were that a boy 
seeking to gain admittance to the high officials 
of the company on the plea of “important 
information” would be laughed at. And after 
all, he realized that his story would sound 
vague and incoherent unless those who heard 
it had their own reasons for believing its 
truth. If he knew definitely, for instance, the 
identity of the men whom he had overheard — 

He turned back to the hotel with an inspira¬ 
tion. Why not ask the clerk for the couple’s 
names? 

Mustering his most assured smile, he ap¬ 
proached the desk and leaned over its edge 
as he caught the eye of the young man at the 
register. 

“I beg your pardon,” he began, “but can 
you tell me who the two gentlemen are who 
left the desk here about five minutes ago?” 

The clerk frowned. 

“One of them,” continued Eric, “was an 
elderly man with a short mustache, who was 
smoking an unusually long cigar.” 

“Oh!” said the young man at the register, 
brightening, “you must mean Samuel Newell, 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 


67 


the steel magnate. I thought everybody knew 
him from his pictures. The newspapers have 
certainly been cartooning him enough lately/’ 
he added with a laugh. 

Eric drew a deep breath. Samuel Newell, 
the head of the Susquehanna Steel plant! 
And the Susquehanna plant was the local 
branch of the great Steel Trust! His impulse 
bounded at the possibilities of the thought. 
No one could doubt now the significance of his 
chance information. 

“Do you know the name of the gentleman 
with Mr. Newell ?” he asked. 

“That was John Baker of Pittsburg, the 
man they call ‘Golden-fingered John’ in the 
steel business. They say he has more inside 
information about the steel market than any 
other man in the country, unless it is ‘Andy’ 
Carnegie or ‘Charley’ Schwab,” confided the 
clerk, evidently not adverse to impressing 
his youthful questioner with the extent of his 
business knowledge. “Mr. Newell took lunch 
with him here to-day. Mr. Baker is going back 
to Pittsburg to-morrow. I wouldn’t be sur¬ 
prised,” he added sapiently, “if there isn’t 
something in the wind. Men like that don’t 


68 


CINDERS 


get together for nothing. But to see them here 
in the lobby you’d think that making a million 
or so was an every-day affair to them. You 
would never take them to be any different from 
you or me.” 

Eric’s eyes glistened. It there was really a 
big business coup about ready for execution, 
perhaps this was the very impression they had 
sought to give as a mask for their plans. And 
this might have been why they had met in 
the hotel instead of Samuel Newell’s office! 

“Thank you!” he said with a warmth the 
significance of which the clerk evidently did 
not appreciate. 

“Oh, you’re welcome!” returned the other 
carelessly, stepping back to his work. 

Eric’s brain was whirling when he reached 
the street again. Now that the vital worth of 
his information was assured, he was dazed. 
He leaned back against the side of the building, 
trembling with excitement. Something very like 
stage-fright was seizing him. 

A leather-lunged newsboy brushed past him 
with the first edition of the evening papers. 
The lad’s staccato refrain penetrated Eric’s 
daze. 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 


69 


“ Steel Trust Emissary Reaches Benton. 
New Blow in Big Industrial War Expected. 
President Fordham of the American Steel 
Company Ill at his Home.” 

Eric fumbled in his pocket for a copper and 
seized a paper from the boy’s bundle. 

The article under the screaming headlines 
was built mostly of speculations and surmises. 
Obviously the visit of John Baker had been 
seized upon by an alert reporter familiar 
enough with the war of the steel mills to 
weave half a column of sensational deductions 
from the fact. Eric was about to thrust the 
paper into his pocket when his glance was 
arrested by another paragraph: 

“Daniel Fordham, head of the American 
Steel Company, who has been confined to his 
home at 225 Maple Avenue for several days 
with an attack of grippe, refused to make any 
comment on Mr. Baker’s visit, but admitted 
that his company has been at work for some 
time on a new blast-furnace equipment which 
might be expected to work something of a 
revolution in the manufacture of steel.” 

Eric read the paragraph a second time, more 
slowly. Was there a connection between the 


70 


CINDERS 


plans for the furnace improvements and the 
sentences he had caught from the Trust offi¬ 
cials? Had he found the key to the situa¬ 
tion? If President Fordham had been quoted 
correctly— 

Eric started forward so abruptly that two or 
three of the passers-by gazed at him curiously. 
A suggestion had come to him so daring that 
for a moment it swept away his breath. 

Why not carry his story directly to President 
Fordham himself? 

Could he gain admittance to the presence of 
the great steel man, who was rated among the 
industrial leaders of the nation? 

He had often passed the palatial Fordham 
residence, and had been dazzled, as had the 
other boys of Benton, by the magnificence 
of its terraced grounds, the frowning wall 
surrounding them, and the glimpse of the 
tower and gables of the impressive house 
beyond, rising through the trees like the out¬ 
lines of an old English castle. 

Eric Raymond, however, was not a youth 
easily daunted. And there was a stimulus in 
the very magnitude of the undertaking that 
thrilled him. He folded his newspaper with 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 71 

tightening lips. He would attempt the errand 
anyway. 

Ten minutes’ walk took him to Maple Avenue, 
the city’s most imposing and aristocratic thor¬ 
oughfare; and another five minutes brought 
him to the square whose entire length was em¬ 
braced by the Fordham estate. 

At sight of the iron gates of the entrance his 
brisk pace slackened perceptibly. He walked 
slowly past, scanning the stone wall of the 
grounds dubiously, his courage oozing. With¬ 
out indorsement he could never gain ad¬ 
mittance, let alone an interview with President 
Fordham. 

Midway in the block he turned abruptly. 
Certainly there was nothing in his errand to 
cause him to shrink or apologize. On the other 
hand, he was conferring a favor, not asking 
one. Drawing his cap a little more firmly 
he walked through the gate and up the winding 
stone walk that circled through an avenue of 
majestically swaying oaks. 

On either side stretched an inviting expanse 
of sloping lawn, dotted with flowerplots faded 
by the October frosts, but which were evi¬ 
dently a wealth of color during the summer 


72 


CINDERS 


months. Ahead loomed the great stone pile 
of the Fordham home, whose rugged lines 
might have been patterned after the fortified 
hold of some lord of feudal times. 

As Eric paused at the graveled driveway 
bordering it, a cry of alarm in a boyish voice 
brought him facing about. From the farther 
corner of the house a frightened pony was 
dashing, with a lad of perhaps twelve in the 
saddle. The youngster’s feet were gripped in 
the stirrups, and he was tugging back on his 
lines in an ineffectual effort to check his head¬ 
long course. It was evident that unless the 
pony was brought up short a serious accident 
might result. 

Eric stepped out into the driveway, and with 
a reassuring word to the boy in the saddle 
braced himself. As the pony reached his side, 
he leaped forward and caught the reins. For a 
moment a lively struggle followed. The pony 
was a wiry, high-strung animal, and showed 
an instant rebellion at the new hand on its bit. 
But it was outmastered. 

At the end of ten yards it slowed to a sullen 
halt, and its youthful rider sprang to the 
ground. Eri^ noticed with quick approval 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 73 

that, except for a slight paleness, he showed 
no signs of agitation. 

“I say, that was clever work of yours!” 
the youngster cried impulsively as he patted 
the pony’s quivering neck. “Dandy doesn’t 
often act this way, and it was only an old 
newspaper blowing in his face that sent him 
off this time.” He glanced across at Eric cu¬ 
riously as the other stepped back, smoothing 
his rumpled tie. “I guess, though, if it hadn’t 
been for you I might have been in a bad way. 
I hope Dad doesn’t hear about it. He is sus¬ 
picious of Dandy anyway.” 

The pony tossed its head, as though ex¬ 
pressing its entire indifference as to who heard 
of the affair, while its young master slipped 
its lines over his arm and fell into step at Eric’s 
side. 

“I am much obliged to you,” he continued 
with a precise formality rather noticeable in 
a boy of his age. Eric saw also, now that he 
had opportunity to observe him closely, that 
the~e were certain curious details in his dress — 
a close-fitting jacket with a lay-down collar 
over it, and long trousers, although he was 
under the average height for his years. And 


74 


CINDERS 


then he remembered reading that it was the 
costume of an English schoolboy. 

“My name is Fordham, Homer Fordham,” 
went on the lad. “What is yours?” 

Eric stared. Was this quiet, unassuming 
boy at his side the son of Daniel Fordham — 
the youngster who, the newspapers had said 
not long ago, would inherit the largest fortune 
in the Central West? He recalled that the papers 
had mentioned that he was being educated 
at the famous British school at Rugby, at the 
request of his mother, whom President Fordham 
had married in England. This would explain 
his dress. 

“My name is Eric Raymond,” Eric answered, 
feeling, in spite of himself, a sudden restraint. 
It was the first boy-millionaire he had ever 
seen. And there is a certain glamour about 
a great fortune, even in the democratic United 
States. 

“I came to see your father,” he added a 
trifle awkwardly. “Is he at home?” 

“Oh, yes.” And then the other continued 
rather dubiously. “Is it a business matter?” 

“Well, yes,” said Eric dryly. 

The boy’s eyes opened. 


ERIC BEARDS THE LION 75 

“Does father know you, or what it is 
about?” 

“No, that is my difficulty. And I must see 
him without delay.” 

Homer Fordham paused, his brow knitting. 

“If I turn you over to Perkins, the butler, 
he will send you to Mr. Jones, the governor’s 
secretary. You say you want to see father 
himself?” 

Eric nodded. 

“Then I will tell you what I will do,” the 
boy announced with sudden decision. “I’ll 
risk it, and take you into the library myself. 
Dad isn’t in a very good humor to-day. He 
never is when he is sick, and he has been working 
since morning with two stenographers, without 
even stopping for lunch. But I guess it won’t 
hurt him to give you a minute, and if he does 
raise a storm I -will tell him of the good turn 
you have done me. Here, Watkins,” he called, 
tossing his pony’s bridle to an approaching 
stable-hand. “And now we will beard the 
lion in his den.” 

He led the way up the steps of a side veranda, 
and through a heavily carved doorway into a 
long dim hall. Midway down its length he 


76 


CINDERS 


paused at a closed door, and with a backward 
smile at Eric threw it open. 

For just an instant Eric hesitated, and then 
followed. A square, high-ceilinged room of 
dark walnut stretched before him, its walls 
lined with book-shelves extending clear around 
it, and in its center a broad, heavy table, filled 
with stacks of typewritten papers, blue-prints, 
and file cases. 

At the table were two men — one with note¬ 
book in hand, apparently a stenographer. 
The other was a short, thickly built man, with a 
profusion of rumpled gray hair and the keenest, 
most disconcerting gray eyes Eric had ever 
seen. Instinctively he knew that he was in the 
presence of Daniel Fordham. 


CHAPTER SIX 

An Interview with a Great Man 

S Eric Raymond paused doubtfully at the 
edge of the room, Homer Fordham, true 
to his promise, took the initiative. 

“This is Eric Raymond, father.” There 
was a quality in the gray eyes suddenly bent 
toward Eric which made the lad feel that 
they were reading instantly every emotion 
of his flushed face. They were as sharp and 
cold as the steel which had made their owner’s 
fame and fortune. Even Homer shifted nerv¬ 
ously. 

“Dandy had a bad scare in the yard,” he 
continued hurriedly, as though anxious to 
have his explanation over. “If it hadn’t been 
for Raymond I might have had an ugly fall. 
When I found he had come here to see you 
I thought I would bring him in myself.” 

“To see me?” Daniel Fordham’s shaggy 
gray eyebrows raised inquiringly. “I will 


78 


CINDERS 


have something to say to you, Homer, on the 
subject of Dandy later. How often have I 
told you never to ride alone? If this young 
man has assisted you, of course I thank him.” 
His eyes narrowed. “You said that he had 
business with me?” 

Eric stepped forward, his shoulders stiffen¬ 
ing, much as they would have done for a scrim¬ 
mage on the football field. He raised his eyes 
to the frowning man before him, uncomfort¬ 
ably conscious that the other occupants of 
the room were all staring at him. 

“I have information,” he began, “which 
I thought you ought to know. It is about 
the — Steel Trust.” 

Mr. Fordham’s eyebrows again raised, but 
he gazed at the youth without speaking. Eric 
endeavored swiftly to shape his thoughts into 
a few words. 

“President Newell of the Susquehanna Steel 
Company and John Baker of Pittsburg met at 
the Metropolitan Hotel this noon,” he continued. 
For the first time he felt that there was a 
flicker of interest in the steady gray eyes re¬ 
garding him. 

“They had lunch together, and on their way 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 79 


out took a seat in the lobby. In their conver¬ 
sation, Mr. Baker said —” Eric paused a 
moment, endeavoring to recall the exact words. 

There was no doubt now that he was mak¬ 
ing a real impression. Mr. Fordham had shifted 
his chair and his lips had tightened. 

“Mr. Baker’s sentence,” said Eric slowly, 
“was this: c Then if the gentleman makes 
good to-night, we’ll have the American people 
practically at our mercy!”’ 

“Will you kindly say that over again,” asked 
Mr. Fordham slowly. 

Eric did so. The younger man at the desk 
stooped over his notebook. For the first time 
in his life Eric Raymond knew that his words 
were being taken down in shorthand. 

“Was that all that was said?” asked Mr. Ford¬ 
ham, tapping his desk. 

“All at the time, sir. There was some¬ 
thing else, however, later. The two walked 
out to Mr. Newell’s automobile, and as it was 
driving away, Mr. Baker said: 4 1 will meet 
you at "The Oaks’ then to-night at nine!” 

“You seem to have a good memory, young 
man,” commented Mr. Fordham dryly. 

Eric flushed. 


80 


CINDERS 


“May I ask how you obtained this infor¬ 
mation? Are you an employe of the hotel?” 

“Oh, no, sir! I happened to be in the lobby, 
and was sitting on the other side of the pillar 
where the two were talking. I didn’t know 
who they were at the time, but as soon as I 
heard American Steel —” He stopped and 
then finished impulsively. “You see, I have 
always been interested in the American Steel 
Company. Its fight against the Trust has seemed 
to me just like real war, a good deal like the 
battles the American farmers had for inde¬ 
pendence in the Revolution. It must be a great 
thing to be in a fight like that! I want to be 
a steel man myself if I ever get the chance.” 

Mr. Fordham’s eyes actually twinkled. Their 
coldness might have been a mask that had 
slipped down. The suggestion was heightened 
when a moment later they resumed their old 
expression, as though their owner had sud¬ 
denly realized his indiscretion and snatched 
back the mask. Mr. Fordham reached over 
and pressed a button on his desk. 

A moment later the door opened and a dark- 
featured, quiet-appearing man stepped into 
the room. 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 81 


“Sit down, Rogers,” said Mr. Fordham. 
He motioned to the stenographer. “Please 
read us the statements this young man has 
made us.” 

The clerk obeyed. The dark-featured man 
sat staring at the wall. Eric, however, had the 
conviction that there was no change of ex¬ 
pression in his own features which escaped the 
other’s notice. 

“Well, Rogers,” asked Mr. Fordham when 
the secretary had finished, “what do you make 
of it?” 

The new arrival turned to Eric before he 
answered the question. “Are you in a hurry 
to get away, my boy?” 

“My mother is very ill, sir; I shouldn’t 
like to be away from home too long without 
her knowing where I am.” 

“I presume a half an hour or so wouldn’t 
make any difference?” 

“Of course not.” 

The dark-featured man glanced at Mr. Ford¬ 
ham. 

“Then suppose, Homer, you take our young 
friend in charge for a few minutes,” said the 
latter. “I will call you when I want him.” 


82 


CINDERS 


It was on the tip of Eric’s tongue to ask if 
his information had been of service, but he 
checked the impulse. A suggestion of suppressed 
gravity answered the question for him, hinting, 
indeed, that the others considered his state¬ 
ments too important to discuss in the presence 
of a stranger. Silently he followed Homer into 
the hall. As the door closed he had a brief 
view of the dark-featured man moving his chair 
closer to Mr. Fordham. 

Eric’s youthful conductor turned with glowing 
eyes. 

“I say, Raymond, you surely have made a 
good impression on the governor!” 

“Do you think so?” asked Eric anxiously. 

“If you knew him as well as I do you would 
think so, too. Why, when you said what you 
did about the American Steel Company buck¬ 
ing the Trust he was actually chuckling. 
And when the governor chuckles it means 
something! Why, if I ever get him in a humor 
like that, there are just about'a dozen things 
I would strike him for, and he’d give me every 
one of them, too.” 

There was something about the laugh which 
accompanied the declaration that made Eric 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 83 


smile also. Homer Fordham was just like 
other boys after all! 

“I don’t see how you ever managed it,” 
the other continued as he led the way back 
to the yard. “I mean getting the information 
you did at the hotel, and putting it together 
and all. I guess you are a whole lot brighter 
than I will ever be.” 

“To tell the truth,” said Eric frankly, “it 
was altogether luck. Anybody else could have 
done as well as I did, and your father may de¬ 
cide that there isn’t anything serious in my 
story at all.” 

Homer grinned. 

“Do you know who Rogers is, the man that 
father called in?” 

Eric shook his head. 

“He is the manager of what the governor 
calls his secret-service staff, and is one of the 
best-known detectives in the country.” 

Eric whistled. 

“But why should a steel company need detec¬ 
tives?” he asked incredulously. 

“To handle just such cases as you brought 
up to-day,” said Homer, evidently enjoying 
the opportunity to impart any information to 


84 


CINDERS 


his older companion. “I have heard father say 
that his detective department is one of the 
most valuable features of the company. Why, 
only last year some patents worth over a 
hundred thousand dollars would have been 
stolen if it hadn’t been for Mr. Rogers. If 
there is really anything serious in your infor¬ 
mation you can be sure that he is just the 
man to find it out.” He broke off impetuously. 
“How would you like to see my engine-house?” 

“Engine-house?” repeated Eric. 

Homer laughed. 

“And it is a real one, too. Father gave it 
to me for a birthday present last year.” 

He paused before a low cement building, ad¬ 
joining the imposing stables, which seemed to 
Eric’s wondering eyes large enough and com¬ 
fortable enough to house half a dozen families. 
With a certain air of proprietorship, Homer 
flung open the door of the building. Eric 
paused in the doorway with a cry of aston¬ 
ishment. 

The long room before him could not have 
been filled with a more complete mechanical 
equipment had it been a section of a busy 
factory. Along one side had been erected a 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 85 


horizontal stationary steam engine, with as 
thorough an attention to detail, from fly wheels 
to governors, as though it had beenMesigned 
to supply the daily power for a substantial 
industry. And all this had been given to 
Homer Fordham as a playhouse , as a toy train 
would be given to the average boy. Eric 
glanced at the youngster with a new interest. 

“Every day a man comes up from the mills 
to give me lessons,” explained Homer. “You 
ought to come over sometime when he is here. 
I’ll never forget the look on his face when father 
told him what he was expected to do. I guess 
he thought I was sure to blow myself up, and 
that he would be held responsible. Father 
says that next year, if he has a satisfactory 
report, he will give me a chance to show what 
I can do with the engine myself. Won’t that 
be great! If the rest of my lessons were like 
this I’d be the happiest boy in the world. 
Wouldn’t it be sport if you could get up as 
much interest in Latin or geography? But 
I guess the man who invented them never 
thought of that part of it.” 

“Are you going to be a steel man, too?” 
asked Eric curiously. 


86 


CINDERS 


“Why, I couldn’t be anything else if I 
wanted to. I don’t think father would ever get 
over it if I didn’t follow him at the mills. That 
is why he didn’t want to send me to school 
in England. But mother wanted it, and — 
and —” The boy’s voice quivered, and he 
walked over to the window. “She has been 
dead only a year, and Dad and I thought we 
ought to carry out her wishes.” 

Eric felt a lump coming in his throat. He 
was richer than Homer Fordham after all, 
for against the other’s millions he had a — 
mother! 

Homer stepped back from the window im¬ 
pulsively. 

“I say, I wish you would come over to see 
me often. Do you know, I think I am the 
loneliest boy in Benton. Everybody around 
here stares at me as though I am a kind of a 
curiosity, something to be looked at like a 
side-show. If I could only make people forget 
my name, and go out in town as plain Tom 
Jones or Bill Smith! I tried to make Dad see 
it that way, but it has been so long since he was 
a youngster that I guess he doesn’t under¬ 
stand. 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 87 


“The other day I saw a lot of boys making 
up teams for baseball, and I asked them to let 
me join the game. It was bully for the first 
inning, and then someone recognized me, and — 
and — well, all the snap seemed to go. They 
made me feel awkward, and I knew I was mak¬ 
ing them uncomfortable, too, so I came home. 
But you don’t seem to care. You don’t mind 
if I am Homer Fordham, do you?” 

A knock sounded at the door of the building, 
and an imposing footman bowed to Homer. 

“Mr. Fordham wishes to see young Mr. 
Raymond in his library, sir.” 

Homer grinned ruefully. 

“I was forgetting all about your business with 
father, Eric. You don’t mind if I call you that, 
do you? I’ll wait here for you. I guess Dad 
wants to see you alone.” 

Endeavoring to conceal his uncertainty, Eric 
followed the servant’s ramrod figure back to 
the house. Had the conference in the library 
decided that his story was the exaggeration of a 
boy’s imagination, or really serious informa¬ 
tion? 

The three occupants of the library surveyed 
him for a moment in silence as he was ushered 


88 CINDERS 

into the room. President Fordham was the 
first to speak. 

“We are disposed to believe, Raymond, that 
you have given us valuable service, and that 
you have acted with unusual discretion and 
promptness in bringing your information to us. 
You are quite sure you have told it to no one 
else?” 

“Quite sure, sir.” 

Mr. Fordham looked relieved. 

“I am going to ask you another question. 
What is your own opinion of the conversation 
you overheard?” 

“I have been reading the newspaper accounts 
of your blast-furnace improvements, sir, and 
I thought that it might refer to them.” 

The dark-featured man smiled. 

“If you ask me, I should say that the Ameri¬ 
can Steel Company ought to make room for 
a boy like that on a steady job.” 

“We’ll see about that later.” President Ford¬ 
ham bent his eyes again on Eric. “How would 
you like to test your theory, young man?” 

“Test my theory?” echoed Eric. 

“If certain deductions of Mr. Rogers are 
correct, we may provide our friends, the enemy. 


INTERVIEW WITH GREAT MAN 89 


with an unexpected climax at their appoint¬ 
ment to-night. We have thought that we 
might use you in that connection.” 

Eric’s eyes glistened. 

“Do you really mean it, sir?” 

“I am afraid you are forgetting, young man,” 
interrupted Mr. Rogers, “that you are letting 
yourself in for what may be dangerous business.” 

“I am willing to do what lean, sir,” returned 
Eric eagerly. 

Mr. Fordham pushed back his chair. 

“Then we may consider the matter settled. 
I think that, on the whole, we would prefer 
to have you stay here until Mr. Rogers is ready 
for you this evening. I will arrange to send a 
note to your mother for you, if you wish,” 
he added as Eric’s face fell. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“And if to-night’s events develop as I expect, 
I shall have something interesting to say to 
you to-morrow. The American Steel Com¬ 
pany is quick to appreciate real service, my 
boy.” 

Something of the momentary smile was again 
flashing in President Fordham’s eyes. 

Eric reached the door in a daze. “Something 


90 


CINDERS 


interesting to say to you to-morrow!” Was he 
actually to find a start in the career of a steel 
man? He found himself wishing that someone 
would pinch him — that he might know whether 
he was awake or dreaming. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 
What Happened at “The Oaks” 


OHORTLY before eight o’clock that evening 
a low knock sounded at the door of the large 
cozy room given over to Homer Fordham as 
his own particular sanctum on the second floor 
of the big imposing house. 

The young heir of the Fordham millions 
glanced up from the bookcases filling one corner 
of the room, where he had been showing Eric 
the contents of his library. With a copy of 
“Treasure Island” in his hands, Homer went 
to the door. Mr. Rogers stood outside in a 
linen duster and an automobile cap. 

Something like a twinkle came into his eyes 
as he noticed the occupation of the two lads. 

“You seem to be getting on famously,” he 
smiled. 

“I have had the bulliest time I have had for 
weeks,” said Homer impulsively. “Eric and 
I had dinner together up here, and since then 


92 


CINDERS 


we have been going through my books. Have 
you come for him?” 

“I have, if he is going with me to-night.” 

Eric jumped to his feet, although not with¬ 
out a reluctant glance at the generously filled 
shelves at his shoulders. He had never im¬ 
agined that any single youth was the possessor 
of such a wealth of boys’ books. Why, there 
were complete series of all his favorite authors, 
from Jules Verne to Captain Marry at and 
Mayne Reid! In the contemplation of the 
treasures before him, the errand that had 
detained him at the Fordham house had almost 
completely slipped his mind. 

“I am ready, sir,” he said to Mr. Rogers. 
“Are we going far?” 

“Quite a little distance, I should say,” 
answered the detective. “And the less time 
we lose now the better.” 

Homer brought Eric’s cap with an exclama¬ 
tion of disappointment. 

“I wish I could go with you! But when I 
asked father he looked at me in that way of his 
which sort of chokes up everything you wanted 
to say, and I knew there wasn’t any use to 
plead with him.” 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 93 


He turned to Eric. “You won’t forget to come 
back and see me again soon, will you? And 
say, if there are any of those books you would 
like to read, I’ll be glad to loan them to you.” 

Eric hesitated, and then shook his head. 
“I won’t take any now, thanks.” He fancied 
that he saw a shadow of approval in Mr. Rogers’ 
eyes. Eric Raymond, seeking employment 
as apprentice in the steel mills, borrowing books 
from the son of President Fordham! Perhaps 
the wide gulf which the thought emphasized 
between himself and the youngster at his side 
gave to Eric’s parting words more stiffness 
than would otherwise have been the case. 

“You have been very kind to me,” he said, 
stepping after Mr. Rogers, “and I thank you 
very much.” 

As he reached the stairs, he glanced back. 
Homer Fordham was still standing in the door¬ 
way of his room, staring after them wistfully. 

Drawn up at the side veranda in the yard 
below was an automobile. Daniel Fordham 
was pacing up and down before the machine. 
As he was still dressed in his faded smoking 
jacket, however, it was apparent that he did 
not intend to accompany the car. 


94 


CINDERS 


As he caught sight of Mr. Rogers and Eric 
he snapped open his watch. 

“Oh, I think we’ll be in time, sir,” said the 
detective, noting his suggestion of impatience. 

“You are quite sure about what you intend 
to do?” 

“Quite sure, sir.” 

Mr. Rogers motioned Eric to climb into the 
car. “If all goes well you can expect me 
back within two hours at the outside.” 

Mr. Fordham restored his watch to his 
pocket and stepped closer to the machine. 
Eric could feel his eyes searching him with the 
same intentness they had shown during the 
interview in the library. 

“If this night’s work results as I expect, 
young man, you will hear from me to-morrow.” 

Eric was at a loss whether to say “thank 
you” or merely “good night.” There was 
something so mysterious, so unreal about the 
whole affair. Only a few hours before his 
effort to find employment at the steel mills 
had met with failure, and now he was being 
dispatched on an apparently confidential mis¬ 
sion by the great Daniel Fordham himself. 

Eric moved over to the end of the seat as 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 95 


Mr. Rogers climbed to his side. The chauffeur 
bent over his wheel, and the car moved slowly 
down the driveway. Eric had a last glimpse 
of the great house looming strangely gaunt 
and forbidding in the shadows, and then the 
trees blotted it from view, and the electric 
lights of the entrance gates twinkled ahead. 

The car swerved out onto Maple Avenue 
in an easterly direction, which, if continued, 
would soon take it beyond the residential sec¬ 
tion of the town. Eric peered ahead, realizing 
suddenly that he had no idea either as to the 
character of the errand on which they were 
engaged, or the destination to which they were 
bound. So far as he was concerned, the situ¬ 
ation resembled a good deal a game of Blind- 
man’s Buff. He glanced at Mr. Rogers, and 
saw that the detective was staring down at the 
pavement in a preoccupied silence. 

A sudden impulse came to the boy to ask an 
explanation of the affair, and then, with an 
effort, he checked himself and settled back 
into his seat. When the time came for his ser¬ 
vices, if they were to be used, undoubtedly 
he would be told what was expected of him. 
Until then the satisfaction of his curiosity 


96 


CINDERS 


could wait. Although Eric did not realize it, 
his repression in such a situation was one of 
the greatest recommendations he could have 
given to a business man. Mr. Rogers had been 
mentally speculating as to just how long his 
young companion would be able to keep his 
silence. 

Gradually Eric awoke to the fact that the 
automobile was swerving to the south in a circle 
that would bring it completely outside the city 
limits. The pavement had given way to dirt 
roads, and the prosperous-looking residences 
of Maple Avenue had been replaced by the 
straggling dwellings dotting the outskirts of 
the city. And then the last of the municipal 
electric lights vanished, and except for the 
acetyline rays of the automobile headlight 
the path ahead was blanketed in darkness. 
Eric saw that Mr. Rogers’ attitude had changed. 
His preoccupation had gone, and he was leaning 
forward alertly in his seat. 

For perhaps a quarter of an hour the course 
of the machine continued. With the town pave¬ 
ments behind, the chauffeur had increased his 
speed, until the keen night air swept sharply into 
the faces of his passengers. Two crossroads were 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 97 


passed, with their signboards creaking dismally 
in the wind, although with the speed of the car 
and the darkness it was impossible for Eric 
to decipher their inscriptions. Shortly after 
the second guidepost flashed by, Mr. Rogers 
spoke a low sentence to the chauffeur, and the 
speed of the machine was reduced. The de¬ 
tective half rose from his seat, with his eyes 
sweeping the path of the car’s headlight and 
occasionally darting into the shadows at the side 
of the road. Once he turned and stared for 
some time behind them. 

Eric’s bewilderment was momentarily grow¬ 
ing. They had progressed a number of miles 
from Benton, and it was evident that they 
were following a definite route. Where was it 
leading? Certainly there was no apparent re¬ 
lation between this lonely country road and 
the mills of the American Steel Company! 
Eric had opened his lips again to ask an explana¬ 
tion of the puzzle, when a low stone wall loomed 
at their right, broken a short distance ahead 
by an arched gateway. The car swerved close 
up under the wall and stopped. 

Mr. Rogers jumped to the ground and ad¬ 
vanced to the gateway. He did not pass 


98 


CINDERS 


through, however, but stood hugging the wall, 
apparently reconnoitering. Eric followed him 
as he saw that the detective gave no indication 
of returning. 

The gate opened into the grounds of an 
imposing country estate, suggesting the Ford- 
ham yard, although much larger and designed 
on a much more pretentious scale. Just above 
the gateway an electric light was burning dully, 
evidently supplied from a private dynamo in 
the grounds. As Eric’s eyes followed the rays 
of the light, he saw that which explained of a 
sudden both their destination and the object 
of their expedition. 

In the arch of the gate, illumined faintly 
by the light overhead, was the inscription, 
“The Oaks.” 

The country home of Samuel Newell, presi¬ 
dent of the Susquehanna Steel Company! 
The circumstances under which he had first 
heard the name, the interview in the hotel 
lobby of which he had been a chance eaves¬ 
dropper, flashed back to Eric with a new mean¬ 
ing. It was at “The Oaks” where the officials 
of the Steel Trust had arranged their appoint¬ 
ment with the unknown emissary of the Ameri- 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 99 


can plant. And it was easy to understand now 
that Mr. Rogers had planned his trip to dis¬ 
cover the identity of that emissary, and per¬ 
haps block his purpose. Had Eric been ex¬ 
perienced in business reasoning, the object 
of the detective’s mission would probably have 
been suggested before, and likewise the ex¬ 
planation of his own presence. He would have 
guessed that he had been brought not so much 
from any expectation of using him as to pre¬ 
vent his telling his story elsewhere until the 
company had protected its interests. 

Eric felt Mr. Rogers’ eyes surveying him with 
the suspicion of a smile. 

“Is the mystery clear to you at last?” 

Eric nodded rather ruefully. 

“I suppose you think I am unusually dense 
not to have guessed it before.” 

“I think you are unusually close-mouthed 
not to have bombarded me with questions for 
the last half-hour,” said Mr. Rogers dryly. 

He snapped open his watch, and stepped to the 
end of the wall. In the distance Eric could see 
two or three scattered farmhouses, and per¬ 
haps a quarter of a mile down a side road the 
misty lights of a suburban railway station. 


100 


CINDERS 


One could guess that it had been erected more 
for the personal benefit of Samuel Newell than 
because of any pressing demands of transpor¬ 
tation. 

‘‘There is a train from Benton due here at 
nine o’clock,” said Mr. Rogers, drawing the 
collar of his coat up around his neck as the 
wind showed signs of quickening. “The per¬ 
son we are expecting may come by rail, or he 
may follow our example and make the trip by 
motor. Whichever method he chooses, we 
have got to intercept him before he reaches 
his destination — and before he has any sus¬ 
picion of a trap. Otherwise he would probably 
be shrewd enough to dispose of any incrimi¬ 
nating evidence in his possession before we 
could reach him.” He moved back into the 
shadow of the wall as a belated farm wagon 
clattered by. “If your information is correct, 
my boy, we should provide him with a disagree¬ 
able surprise.” 

He drew out a cigar from his pocket, and then 
restored it reluctantly. “I have known the 
fumes of tobacco, or the glow of a cigar, to 
spoil a detective’s vigil of hours,” he said. 

Eric felt his pulses tingle as the two walked 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 101 


back to the automobile. He was actually 
taking part in a real adventure with a real de¬ 
tective. Wouldn’t Tom Noraker’s eyes bulge 
when he heard the story! Involuntarily he 
found himself glancing over his shoulder toward 
the wide driveway, winding back toward the 
Newell house, hidden by the trees and darkness. 

And yet there was no hint of excitement in 
Mr. Rogers’ attitude, nothing of the tension 
Eric had always associated with a detective 
on a critical case. As a matter of fact, Mr. 
Rogers spoke and acted exactly like a normal 
business man about his day’s work. Eric 
would have been still more surprised had he 
known that the detective’s pockets did not 
contain a weapon of any description. 

The chauffeur had extinguished all of the 
lights of the car so that, except for its vague 
bulk in the shadows, one might have passed 
within a dozen feet of it without being aware 
of its presence. 

With a suddenness intensified by the silence 
of the neighborhood the whistle of a loco¬ 
motive sounded in the vicinity of the rail¬ 
road station. Mr. Rogers again glanced at 
his watch with the aid of a match, and nodding 


102 


CINDERS 


to Eric hurried back to the end of the wall. 
Straining their eyes down the crossroad, they 
could dimly make out a train at the station 
ahead. 

It had hardly paused when, as though im¬ 
patient at being delayed by such an insignifi¬ 
cant station, its whistle shrilled again, and 
its cars rumbled on into the night. For several 
minutes the dark stretch of the road showed 
no signs of an arriving visitor at “The Oaks.” 
Eric was stepping back when a whisper from 
Mr. Rogers brought him again into attention. 

The figure of a tall, well set-up man in a 
light overcoat was swinging toward them. In 
one hand was a leather portfolio. Between 
his lips glowed the red end of a cigar. He 
was alone and moving at a brisk pace, as 
though relaxing his muscles after his ride. 

Eric caught his breath. Was this the man 
whose mission at “The Oaks” Mr. Rogers 
was endeavoring to prevent? And if so how 
was the detective proposing to act? 

The man, advancing toward them, proceeded 
with an assured, almost a careless bearing. 
Evidently he counted himself entirely alone, 
and so thoroughly assured of the fact that 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 103 


he did not glance either to the right or left. 
To Eric’s overstrained nerves it seemed im¬ 
possible that he should fail to discover his 
hidden observers; but when Mr. Rogers, wait¬ 
ing until he was almost abreast of them, stepped 
out before him the man could not have been 
taken more by surprise had the detective 
dropped from the clouds. 

For a minute he stood staring in a sort of 
tongue-tied bewilderment. Eric had vaguely 
imagined that Mr. Rogers would spring out from 
his concealment with a drawn revolver, and that 
a desperate struggle would follow, such as he 
had once read of in a lurid detective tale which 
Tom Noraker had smuggled into his father’s barn. 

But there was nothing to attract the atten¬ 
tion of a passer-by unfamiliar with the situ¬ 
ation. The man with the leather portfolio 
seemed too dazed to speak, and it was Mr. 
Rogers who broke the silence. 

“Good evening, Walker,” he said dryly. 

The other found his voice with an effort. 

“WTiat are you doing here?” he stammered. 

Mr. Rogers took a step closer to him. 

“I fancy that your own errand should explain 
that.” His voice hardened. “You will kindly 


104 CINDERS 

give me that portfolio which you are holding 
so tightly.” 

For the first time the man called Walker — 
and whom Eric now saw was a comparatively 
young man, not over thirty — glanced wildly 
around him. The detective’s hand closed over 
his arm. 

“I know what that portfolio contains — 
and I know that it is stolen property. Are 
you going to allow me to return it to its right¬ 
ful owners, or do you want to force me to dis¬ 
agreeable measures to recover it?” 

Walker tried to shake off his hand, but Mr. 
Rogers’ grip was firm. 

“You — you have made an absurd mis¬ 
take. I — I am only carrying some private 
papers to a friend of mine. You have no right 
to hold me this way. I shall call for help if 
you do not release me.” 

“Help!” Mr. Rogers’ voice snapped with a 
sternness which Eric would never have asso¬ 
ciated with him. “Help from the Newell 
house, eh? Do you realize, Walker, that you 
are not only a thief but a traitor? But there 
is no use of wasting further words. Either 
you give me that portfolio at once or —” 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 105 


The detective’s hand left his prisoner’s arm 
and closed over the leather bag of papers 
that the other was carrying. At the same in¬ 
stant the younger man, releasing his hold of 
the bag, sprang full upon Mr. Rogers’ shoulders 
with the intention of bearing him to the ground. 

The detective staggered back under the un¬ 
expected weight and tripped on a loose stone 
in the road. He flung out his arms instinctively 
to save himself, and Walker seized the oppor¬ 
tunity offered to him. Digging his knee into 
Mr. Rogers’ back, he sent the detective sprawl¬ 
ing into the road, and snatched the portfolio 
from his hand. 

With a low laugh Walker hugged his recov¬ 
ered trophy to his breast, darting back toward 
the wall with the evident purpose of springing 
through the gateway beyond, and then — 

In his excitement he did not notice a dark 
obstruction three or four inches above the road 
before him. He was glancing forward, not down¬ 
ward. The obstruction in the shape of Eric 
Raymond’s right leg, thrust squarely in his 
path, did its work well. The fleeing man could 
not have been tripped more effectually. As he 
fell ignominiously, his portfolio flew from him. 


106 


CINDERS 


Drawing back his leg, Eric caught up the bag 
as Mr. Rogers regained his feet. 

Walker, darting a frightened glance over his 
shoulder, gathered himself up just as the de¬ 
tective sprang toward him. The next instant 
came the sound of his running steps in wild 
retreat down the pike. 

Mr. Rogers shook his shoulders grimly as 
Eric extended the captured portfolio. 

“Shall we follow him?” asked the boy ex¬ 
citedly. 

Mr. Rogers glanced at the contents of the 
bag with the aid of his match-safe before he 
replied. A dozen or more folded blueprints 
and typewritten papers were disclosed. The 
detective’s eyes gleamed as he saw the headings 
of the first two or three. 

“Follow him?” he repeated slowly. “No, my 
boy, we can afford to let him go. Our night’s 
work is over—thanks to your presence of mind.” 

“Oh, that was easy enough. When I saw 
him springing toward me I happened to think 
that if I could trip him I might delay him until 
you could get back on your feet. If he had 
seen me first, of course I couldn’t have held him. 
Is the bag what you were hoping to find, sir?” 


WHAT HAPPENED AT “THE OAKS” 107 


“Even more/’ said Mr. Rogers closing the 
portfolio with a deep breath of relief. “Had 
Walker carried through his purpose, the Ameri¬ 
can Steel Company would have suffered one 
of the worst business blows of several years. 
The plans in this receptacle describe one of 
the biggest improvements ever devised in the 
making of steel. Some day perhaps you will 
hear more about it.” 

With the portfolio clutched tightly, Mr. 
Rogers led the way back to the automobile. 
The chauffeur had evidently witnessed the 
struggle and its culmination, and was already 
readjusting his lights. As the detective climbed 
into the car, he paused on the step and glanced 
over his shoulder toward the frowning trees of 
“The Oaks.” 

“I’d like to see the face of Mr. Samuel Newell 
when his expected visitor doesn’t appear;” 
he chuckled. 

But it was not of Mr. Newell that Eric was 
thinking. He was trying to picture the face 
of his mother when he should pour into her 
ears the story of the amazing happenings of 
the past ten hours. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 

Eric Makes a Business Call 

JT was not often that the postman found oc¬ 
casion to stop at the Raymond cottage. Had 
his route been confined to patrons with as 
little demand on the United States mail ser¬ 
vice as the Raymond family, his lot would have 
been an easy one, indeed. On the morning 
following the surprising series of events we have 
chronicled, however, the carrier checked his steps 
at the little white gate and glanced a second 
time at the topmost letter in his hand. 

It must be confessed it was a rather re¬ 
markable-looking letter for such an unassum¬ 
ing address. The envelope was of a legal size, 
and in its upper left-hand corner was the heavily 
embossed inscription, “American Steel Com¬ 
pany, Benton, Illinois.” Altogether there 
was a suggestion of official importance about 
it which would have made it noticeable at once. 
Balancing it curiously, the postman ascended 
the Raymond steps and rang the bell. 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 109 


Eric, fresh from the breakfast table, opened 
the door. 

“Good morning!” he said, smiling. And then 
he stopped, staring. He had read the in¬ 
scription on the envelope, and its typewritten 
address. The important-looking letter from the 
American Steel Company was directed to him¬ 
self! 

When the postman looked back from the gate 
the lad was still standing on the veranda, gazing 
down at the long envelope in a sort of fascin¬ 
ated bewilderment. Surely some mistake had 
been made! 

President Fordham had promised to com¬ 
municate with him, of course, if the errand of 
the previous evening developed satisfactorily, 
but there had been no time or opportunity for 
him to write and mail a letter for the morning 
delivery. 

Eric did not know that Daniel Fordham did 
a large part of his work while his neighbors 
slept. 

Eric finally shook himself with a little laugh 
and tore open the envelope in his hand. Why 
hadn’t he done so at once? Of course he couldn’t 
learn what was in it by staring at the outside. 


110 


CINDERS 


A square sheet of linen paper, with the same 
inscription, “American Steel Company,” at 
its head met his wondering eyes, and under it, 
in smaller type, the line, “Office of the Presi¬ 
dent.” And yes — there could be no doubt 
about it — the signature in a small, cramped 
writing, “Daniel Fordham.” 

But it was not these facts in themselves which 
made Eric gasp of a sudden for breath. In¬ 
closed in the letter was a long, narrow slip of 
green paper, on w T hich the small, cramped sig¬ 
nature appeared again. It was a check, au¬ 
thorizing the First National Bank of Benton to 
pay to the order of Eric Raymond the sum of 
one hundred and fifty dollars. 

In a daze, Eric read the dozen typewritten 
lines of the letter — a daze so pronounced that 
even the fact that it addressed him for the first 
time in his life as “Mister” passed unnoticed. 

“ Mr. Eric Raymond, 

Benton, Illinois. 

“ Dear Sir: Our Mr. Rogers has reported the re¬ 
sult of his expedition of this date, and its satisfactory 
conclusion, thanks largely to your assistance. 

“ I am pleased to commend your shrewdness and 
ability, and in token thereof and in appreciation of 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 111 


the information which you this day furnished us I 
enclose our check of one hundred and fifty dollars. 

“ If you will call at our plant between the morn¬ 
ing hours of eleven and twelve o’clock and send your 
name to our superintendent, Mr. Radcliff, I have no 
doubt that he will be able to arrange employment for 
you in pursuance of your ambition to become a 
steel man. 

“ Very truly yours, 

“Daniel Fordham.” 

It was true, then. His eyes were not de¬ 
ceiving him. The letter and the check were 
actually intended for him. But — one hundred 
and fifty dollars! Why, why — Eric groped 
his way in through the doorway of the cottage, 
across the little living room, and into his 
mother’s chamber. 

At the sight of his white face she rose to her 
elbow in quick alarm. 

He dropped the letter and its inclosure into 
her hand, and stood staring down at her as she 
read the typewritten lines. She raised her eyes 
after a moment, and stretched up her arms. 

“Eric, my big, brave boy!” she said. And 
he found himself on his knees by the bed, 
with his face on her shoulder. She stroked back 
his hair. 


112 


CINDERS 


“Then I am not dreaming after all?” he 
gasped. 

“Of course you are not dreaming, you foolish 
lad.” 

“But, Mumsy, think of it! Just think of 
it! Why, I did nothing — nothing at all to 
deserve all of this!” 

Mrs. Raymond laughed softly. 

“Probably not from your standpoint. But 
I hardly think Daniel Fordham is a man who 
would sign his name to a business check through 
sentiment. You can rest assured that in his 
judgment you are entitled to all that he has 
sent you. Of course, it was largely luck, 
Eric. Such a situation might not come to you 
again in ten years. We must not let our com¬ 
mon sense be blinded, you know, even al¬ 
though one hundred and fifty dollars does seem 
an awfully big amount to us.” 

Eric rose to his feet, his eyes gleaming. 

“That is the best part of it. We can pay 
your doctor bill now, and and you won’t 
have to worry any more, will you? That is 
enough to give you a good long rest, isn’t it?” 

“But that money was sent to you, Eric,” 
Mrs. Raymond protested. 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 118 


“I’d like to know if what is mine isn’t 
yours!” Eric burst out. “What is a boy given 
a mother for if it isn’t to help her? If you are 
going to talk like that I’ll call the nurse.” 
He picked up the letter again. “And I’m 
going to have a job, too — a real job. Mumsy, 
I am the happiest boy in Benton!” 

Mrs. Raymond’s gaze met his rather wist¬ 
fully. 

“ Oh, Eric, I — I am afraid!” 

“Afraid?” the boy echoed. 

“There, now, I shouldn’t have said that, I 
know. But a steel mill seems just like a great 
cruel battleground — and you are so young, 
Eric! If you were even two years older —” 

“But I’m not, and if I waited until then what 
would become of you and Ruth?” Eric drew 
himself up to his most impressive height. 
“And besides, Carnegie, and Frick, and Schwab, 
and lots of the other big steel men began before 
they were as old as I am.” 

Mrs. Raymond smiled in spite of herself. 

“I’ll do the best I can then to reconcile my¬ 
self. But oh, my boy, if—” 

Eric kissed her. 

“And some day I may be a Carnegie or a 


114 


CINDERS 


Frick, and we can have a castle ourselves, and 
give away libraries with our name on.” 

“We can hope so anyway, can’t we, Nurse?” 
laughed Mrs. Raymond as her white-capped 
attendant entered the room with her morning 
broth. Miss Prescott frowned with professional 
disapproval at the evidences of her excitement. 

“Oh, this is the kind of excitement that does 
me more good than your medicines,” said Mrs. 
Raymond as she noticed the other’s glance. 

Eric stepped back from the bed. 

“I am going over to the mill to see Mr. 
Noraker, mother, and find what he has to 
say about it all. Won’t he be surprised, though! 
And I can imagine Tom’s face when he hears 
about it. I think I’ll just have about time 
to see Mr. Noraker and get down to the steel 
plant by eleven o’clock. I wouldn’t be late 
for anything.” 

“I don’t think there is any danger of your 
permitting yourself to be tardy,” smiled Mrs. 
Raymond as Eric waved his hand from the 
doorway. 

Quite apart from Eric’s boyish eagerness to 
announce his news, his decision to call on Mr. 
Noraker was a wise one. There are times in 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 115 


a lad’s life when no one can quite take the place 
of a father, who can combine a sympathetic 
understanding of his hopes with the caution¬ 
ing advice of mature experience. This thought 
was in Mr. Noraker’s mind when he laid down 
his tools and listened gravely to the boy’s 
excited story. 

“You have been lucky, Eric,” he said. “I 
doubt if you appreciate just how lucky, and 
unless I am very much mistaken you have an 
unusual chance before you. It depends a 
great deal with you just how much of a chance 
it proves to be.” 

“I am not going to be found wanting,” 
replied Eric confidently; “that is, if hard work 
counts for anything.” 

“I wasn’t thinking of that exactly,” con¬ 
tinued Mr. Noraker. “I know you well enough 
to be sure of your industry. What I meant was 
that you mustn’t let your good fortune run 
away with you. You will understand as you 
grow older that the kind of a letter you have 
received from Daniel Fordham is a real dis¬ 
tinction. President Fordham is not a man 
to give praise without meaning it. There 
fire many men in the business world who would 


110 


CINDERS 


count themselves ‘made’ with such a letter as 
you have had. I am telling you this because I 
don’t want you to let it turn your head. You 
can be sure that Mr. Fordham will know just 
how far you presume on his favor, and the 
spirit in which you receive it. If I were you 
I would not mention your letter to a person 
at the mill, not even to Mr. Radcliff, unless he 
asks you directly about it. If you are given 
work, as I think you will be, proceed exactly 
as though the letter had not been written. 
In other words, make up your mind that you 
intend to win entirely on your own merits.” 

Mr. Noraker picked up a hammer on his 
bench and balanced it in his hand; but out of 
the corner of his eye he was regarding the boy 
closely. He had spoken just as he would have 
addressed his own son, and because he was 
keenly alive to the handicap which a fatherless 
lad, on the threshold of his business life, faces 
without an older man’s guidance. How would 
Eric receive his frank words? 

The boy held out his hand soberly. “Thank 
you, Mr. Noraker. I had not thought of it 
in the way you have explained, and I think 
I see what you mean. I’ll do my best.” 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 117 


“I know you will, Eric,” said Mr. Noraker, 
heartily clapping him on the shoulder. “‘Gud 
luck be wi’ ye/ as the Scotch say — and let me 
know what develops.” 

Mr. Noraker saw the boy to the door and 
returned to his work. After a moment he 
stepped back and stared through the grimy 
window at the side of his bench. 

“The youngster has the right stuff in him,” 
he muttered to himself. “What a pity his 
father isn’t here to know it! His father—” 
Mr. Noraker continued to stare through the 
window in an abstraction decidedly unusual 
in the midst of working hours. And then 
shaking his head slowly he turned again to 
his task. 

It was shortly after eleven o’clock when 
Eric approached a second time the iron gates 
of the American Steel plant, where he had prof¬ 
fered his request the previous day and been 
turned away empty-handed. The long smoke- 
blanketed buildings, the rows of slender smoke¬ 
stacks like sentries on guard, the thin, wavering 
tongues of flame spurting incessantly up through 
the blue-gray clouds from the throats of the 
Bessemer converters — the same familiar details. 


118 


CINDERS 


Somehow Eric had imagined that they would 
be changed. But it was only his viewpoint 
that was changed. He was to make one of the 
army of industry on this battleground of steel. 
He was to take part in this war of the blast 
furnaces. Or at least he hoped he was. Per¬ 
haps after all he was to be doomed again to 
disappointment. 

At the belated apprehension, he quickened 
his steps. The same gateman who had re¬ 
ceived his message before peered through the 
bars at him and grinned as he recognized his 
face. 

“Back again, youngster?” he asked cheerfully. 

Eric hesitated. Should he ask boldly to 
see the superintendent? He had been told 
in Mr. Fordham’s letter, of course, to ask for 
Mr. Radcliff. Would the manager know what 
he wanted? 

“Will you please tell Mr. Radcliff that Eric 
Raymond is here?” he asked somewhat uncer¬ 
tainly. 

The gateman stared. 

“You mean the superintendent?” he said du¬ 
biously. 

Eric nodded. 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 119 


“I think he will know who I am. I was told 
to ask for him when I came to-day.” For just 
a moment he was tempted to give Mr. Ford- 
ham’s letter to the gateman to deliver to Mr. 
Radcliff; but repressed the impulse. He could 
do that later if necessary. 

The gateman stepped back. 

“I suppose it is all right, young man. If 
you will wait here, I’ll take your message to 
the superintendent’s office. Raymond, you said 
your name was?” 

Eric nodded. “ Thank you!” The boy walked 
back and forth before the gate, trying des¬ 
perately to look calm and matter-of-fact. The 
dingy street before the mills was comparatively 
deserted. In another hour it would be filled 
with the throng of grimy workmen he had seen 
the day before, eager to snatch the brief noon¬ 
day respite from the roar and clang of the fur¬ 
naces. From behind the gate came the dull, 
muffled throb of machinery driven at fever 
heat, the clatter of switching cars, the rumble 
of far-off crashing metal. And over it all the 
smoke clouds billowed and eddied like the 
waves of an angry sea. 

The face of the gateman appeared again 


120 


CINDERS 


at the bars, and with his first movement the 
boy started forward. The man was swinging 
back the gate. 

“Mr. Radcliff’s secretary says for you to come 
right in, youngster.” He glanced at the lad 
curiously. Eric didn't realize until long after¬ 
ward that visitors calling for the personal at¬ 
tention of the superintendent were a decidedly 
rare occurrence. The gateman had returned 
from Mr. Radcliff’s office in something of a daze. 
What possible business could a stripling like 
this have with the superintendent? 

“Maybe you are figuring on buying out 
the plant?” he said good-humoredly as Eric 
followed him. 

“Hardly,” answered the boy, laughing. His 
conductor scratched his head, and with another 
glance at him gave up the problem. Eric’s 
guide led the way across a wide, cinder-paved 
yard, past three long brick buildings from 
which poured gusts of hot, stinging air, and into 
a much smaller building, where the clatter of 
typewriters mingled with the throb of the 
machinery from without. 

A young man at a telephone switchboard 
in a corner of a small reception room nodded 


ERIC MAKES A BUSINESS CALL 121 


to the gateman and spoke a few words into 
his transmitter. He looked up and jerked 
his hand toward Eric. 

“You will find Mr. Radcliff’s office through 
the last door at your right at the end of the 
corridor.” 

Eric tried to copy the other’s businesslike 
air. “Thank you!” he said, and found him¬ 
self in a long, narrow hall, evidently extending 
the length of the building. On one side were 
a series of private offices, and on the other 
side a large open room, filled with a score of 
typewriting machines, all pounding frantically 
as though each were trying to outdo its neigh¬ 
bor. As an example of frenzied business, the 
clatter was significant even to Eric. 

There was no mistaking the particular door 
which the young man at the telephone had 
indicated. A black-lettered sign proclaimed 
the legend, “Superintendent’s Office.” 

Eric drew a deep breath, and knocked boldly. 
A crisp voice within called to him to enter. 
With a suddenly leaping pulse the boy stepped 
into the room beyond. 

It was a square, sparsely furnished office, with 
a rather worn linoleum on the floor, three or 


122 


CINDERS 


four straight-back chairs, a long, ink-spattered 
table in the center, and on the walls a variety 
of blueprints, some of them rolled up, but 
most of them hanging loosely. In one corner 
was a huge roll-top desk, before which sat 
a young man of perhaps thirty-two years of 
age, with his coat off and the cuffs of his shirt¬ 
sleeves thrust back. 

He whirled around in a swivel chair, dis¬ 
closing a pair of humorous brown eyes. Eric 
took a step back with a flush of embarrassment. 
He had evidently made a mistake. 

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “I am 
looking for Mr. Radcliff, the superintendent 
of the American Steel Company.” 

The gray eyes twinkled. 

“I am Mr. Radcliff,” was the answer. 


CHAPTER NINE 
The Battleground of Steel 


^pHE man at the desk saw the lad’s embarrass¬ 
ment, and apparently divined its cause. John 
Radcliff was an expert in reading human nature. 
That was one of the secrets of his remarkable 
success as an executive. The twinkle in his 
eyes continued. And now Eric saw that their 
humor had a strangely contagious quality. He 
found himself smiling back almost before he 
realized it. 

“Sit down,” said Mr. Radcliff pleasantly. 
“I take it that you are Eric Raymond?” 

“Yes, sir.” Already the boy felt more at his 
ease. He realized that he was noting the details 
of the other’s appearance as frankly as though 
Superintendent Radcliff of the American Steel 
Company was just an ordinary man, like Mr. 
Noraker, for instance. Why, he didn’t look 
any older than the coach of the Benton High 
School football team. 

“I have had a letter from Mr. Fordham 


124 


CINDERS 


about you,” continued Mr. Radcliff, studying 
Eric intently in his turn, although the scrutiny 
was managed so adroitly that the boy was quite 
unconscious of it. “He says that you want to 
learn to be a steel man. I am afraid that is 
somewhat indefinite. Am I to take it that you 
would like a place in the office?” 

“Oh, no, sir,” Eric looked dismayed. “I 
want to be a real steel man. I — I thought 
perhaps you could give me work in the plant. 
I have loved machinery all my life, and I 
worked all of last summer over at the tool 
factory. I know I wouldn’t be of much use 
to you in the office, but if there is an open¬ 
ing as apprentice in the mills I would be 
very grateful if you could give me a chance.” 

Mr. Radcliff’s eyes twinkled again. “Have 
you ever seen a steel worker at the end of his 
day’s labor?” he asked suddenly. 

“No, sir,” answered Eric wonderingly. 

“Well, he is about the grimiest, sootiest 
individual imaginable. Sometimes he feels he 
can’t get all of the dirt off, and I guess a good 
many of them don’t try very hard. They 
count themselves lucky if they are only dirty, 
and haven’t half a dozen blisters with the dirt. 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 125 


There is nothing that burns like hot metal; 
not even acid.” Mr. Radcliff’s eyes were still 
twinkling, but he was closely watching the 
effect of his words. 

Eric flushed. “Of course cinders, and 
grime, and smoke aren't very pleasant, but 
it would be a funny mill where you could always 
keep your hands clean. And I guess a little 
hot water and soap would soon take the worst 
of the dirt off.” 

“Good!” said Mr. Radcliff heartily. “So 
long as dirt and grime are confined to the sur¬ 
face they are unimportant. The greatest steel 
magnate of the world worked a good many 
years with dirty hands that most of the young 
men of to-day would have surveyed with horror.” 

“You mean Andrew Carnegie?” asked Eric. 

Mr. Radcliff nodded. 

“When he was thirteen he went to work as 
a bobbin boy in an Allegheny cotton mill 
at $1.20 a week. His father was employed 
as a sort of mechanic in the same mill, and 
his mother took in washing. When he was four¬ 
teen young Andy took his first step upward. 
He was made a furnace stoker at an advance 
of sixty cents a week in his wages.” 


126 


CINDERS 


Mr. Radcliff pressed a button in his desk. 
The door of an inner office opened, and a 
youth perhaps three or four years older than 
Eric answered his call. 

“Take this young man, Morton, over to 
Dan Reynolds. He was looking yesterday for 
a ladle-sculler. Unless he has filled the job, tell 
him to put Raymond to work in the morning.” 

“Thank you!” cried Eric impulsively. And 
then he paused awkwardly as he felt Mr. 
Radcliff s secretary surveying him with a sort 
of patronizing astonishment. From the stand¬ 
point of that young man, ladle-sculler was one 
of the most menial labors of the plant, the kind 
of work to which he took good care to give as 
wide a berth as the duties of his position per¬ 
mitted. And here was a boy, apparently in 
his normal senses, giving thanks at the prospect 
of such a job! 

Perhaps Mr. Radcliff also noted the ex¬ 
pression of his young secretary. As he turned 
back to his desk he said casually, “I began 
as ladle-sculler myself.” 

“You?” echoed Eric involuntarily. 

But Morton was holding open the outer door 
significantly, and the boy reluctantly followed 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 127 


him. Back down the long corridor, out of the 
office building, and across the cinder-paved 
yard the secretary led the way. Eric glanced 
at his guide once or twice with a question on his 
lips, but checked the impulse. Morton didn’t 
look like a young man who would take pleasure 
in answering the inquiries of a boy whom he was 
conducting to the employment of ladle-sculler. 

A sharp turn brought the two around the 
corner of a smoky, dingy building ahead, and 
Eric slackened his steps. The increasing clang 
and din might have prepared him for the scene 
before him had he been more familiar with the 
locality. It was his first close view of the 
feverish activity of a great steel plant. 

For a moment Eric had only a confused 
impression of a deafening volume of noise. 
It was not like any sound he had ever heard 
before. It was the roar of a thousand tons of 
machinery, pouring from hundreds of hot 
metal throats. Later Eric grew able to dis¬ 
tinguish gradually the various sources of the 
din, so that he could pick the harsh clatter of 
the Bessemer converters, the rumble of the 
blast furnaces, the clang of the great slag pots, 
and could even tell the musketlike fusillade of 


128 


CINDERS 


the rail mill from the deeper crash of the rolling 
mill. But now it was just Bedlam. 

And the confusion of it all was increased by 
the clouds of dirty brown smoke. To Eric 
it seemed as though he had stepped unex¬ 
pectedly into a huge cave of smoke. And 
when the stinging of his eyes passed somewhat, 
so that he could see more clearly the details 
of the scene, he had the curious impression 
that he had shrunken in size. A great steel 
mill makes a human being feel smaller, punier 
than almost any other place in the world. 

A half-dozen long grimy buildings bulked 
before him, each thundering out its part in the 
inferno of noise, and pouring out gusts of hot, 
dusty air, and occasionally a shower of red, 
angry sparks, turning to a queer yellow as 
they were swallowed in the smoke. Miles 
of railroad track criss-crossed before, and in, 
and around the buildings; broad gauge track, 
narrow gauge track, stretching across the open 
spaces like a great checkerboard, swerving 
around corners, darting sheer through some 
of the shadowy doorways, running in couples, 
running in twenties, and then vanishing in 
the distance to the level of the lake shore, and 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 129 


down the yellow Calumet River, and away 
to Indiana. Later Eric learned that there 
were over one hundred miles of track in the 
plant, and that the little snorting locomotives 
churned with their loads of ore even to the 
mouths of the Bessemer converters, and up 
spiderlike inclines clear to the summits of 
the giant blast furnaces. The steel mill has 
developed the possibilities of the railroad to 
the maximum. 

And there were cars, hundreds of them, it 
seemed to Eric — cars carrying coke, cars 
carrying limestone, cars carrying ladles of 
liquid iron, cars carrying pots of hot slag, cars 
carrying ingots of red steel. Behind the cars 
and the snorting locomotives, behind the shout¬ 
ing men, behind even the dirty smoke was 
the spirit of something unseen, driving on men 
and wheels like a taskmaker that is never 
satisfied. It was the spirit of Steel, lashing, 
lashing, lashing, never still. The steel plant 
knows no time, no day or night. The flame 
of its furnaces glows angrier, more remorseless 
in the darkness. That is all. Its labor is never 
finished. 

Eric would have lingered in a sort of tongue- 


130 


CINDERS 


tied fascination had the secretary not taken 
his arm rather roughly and piloted him across 
the network of tracks, and around two of the 
long strings of flat cars. Once or twice an 
engineer shouted an angry warning as they 
dodged the more strenuous of the snarling loco¬ 
motives, but the young secretary continued 
in a kind of supreme indifference to it all. 
In fact, judging from the expression he endeav¬ 
ored to cultivate, the whole scene rather 
bored him. 

And then quite suddenly they rounded one 
of the grimy buildings, and Eric came into 
full view of his first blast furnace. The pre¬ 
vious scenes might have been a prelude leading 
up to an awesome climax. Eric drew back 
with a startled gasp. But his emotion was not 
strange. Many a veteran steel man has never 
been able to view the blast furnace without a 
sensation of shrinking awe. It is without 
doubt the most fearful and the most wonderful 
creation of human hands. 

Imagine a row of eight towers rising sheer 
into the air one hundred and twenty-five 
feet. Imagine these towers filled from base 
to summit with a volcano of fire, shooting into 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 131 


the sky a billow of black smoke so thick that 
it might be a geyser of ink. Imagine two streams 
of snarling, crackling liquid iron pouring from 
their sides like water gushes from a suddenly 
opened fire plug. If you can conceive also a 
rumble like that of distant thunder from the 
inside of the tower, and yet unlike thunder, 
because it never stops, you will have a faint 
idea of a blast furnace. No stretch of the im¬ 
agination, however, could think of a tower as 
anything but an inanimate mass of stone or 
brick. A blast furnace seems endowed with 
life. That is what rivets the attention of the 
puny observer at its feet. He finds himself 
regarding it as something living , a great, hostile 
monster, roaring and breathing fire because 
it can’t tear itself free from the string of little 
flat cars creeping up a dizzy trestlework to a 
point just above it, and dumping masses of 
stinging iron ore into its throat, which it has 
to swallow, whether or no. Its rumble might 
be the roar of a beast in agony of indigestion, 
did we not know that its intestines are a cal¬ 
dron of seething fire, and that it could devour 
the string of flat cars and the men operating 
them without so much as a quiver. 


132 


CINDERS 


It costs one million dollars to build a blast 
furnace, and without the slightest warning 
something may go wrong which will cost a 
small fortune to make right. When you feed 
it at its top, you can never know just what is 
going to happen until from the tapping hole 
at its base you withdraw the pure iron and the 
refuse that is called slag. And when you 
consider the fact that there is something like 
a hundred feet of roaring fire inside, anything 
like a close investigation of its digestive tract 
is out of the question. When there is trouble 
the diagnosis has to be made from the outside. 

The main feature of a blast furnace is a 
huge cast-iron stack, rising up through its 
brick wall the height of an eight-story building, 
and capable of holding from six hundred to 
one thousand tons of molten metal. Each fur¬ 
nace is supplied by what the steel-maker calls 
two “stoves” — convenient little iron and brick 
creations from fifty to sixty feet tall. The 
furnace is heated under an air blast of from 
eight to twenty pounds per square inch, forc¬ 
ing the heated air upward through the burning 
mass inside. Otherwise the fire would smother. 
Of course, the fire alone would not be sufficient 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 133 


to extract the iron from the ore, nor could the 
heat be maintained with anything like regular¬ 
ity by fuel supplied only from the bottom. 
Therefore when a flat car of ore dumps its con¬ 
tents into the flaming jaws, it is followed by 
a similar car of coke, and one of limestone. 
The coke helps to feed the fiery tempest, and 
the limestone supplies the additional agent 
needed in the melting of the ore because of the 
following fact. 

We know that water has a peculiar affinity 
for salt. Melted limestone has much the same 
kind of affinity for iron, so that as the furnace 
grows hotter and hotter the limestone carries 
the iron to the bottom, and with it the molten 
slag, much lighter than the iron, a good deal as 
milk settles below the cream in a pail. The 
lime adds to the human likeness of the furnace. 
One might almost fancy that it is fed to this 
monster of stone and iron to aid its digestion, 
just as it is prescribed for a person with a weak 
stomach after meals. 

The operation of the blast furnace, of course, 
is not so simple in its entirety as we have de¬ 
scribed. It is complicated by a variety of de¬ 
tails in the mastery of which lies the iron- 


134 


CINDERS 


maker’s art. For instance, all iron contains 
a certain proportion of silicon, of which sand is 
a compound. If the furnace is kept at a tem¬ 
perature of 800 degrees C., the resulting iron 
will have a deposit of one per cent of silicon. 
On the other hand, three hundred degrees more 
heat, instead of reducing the impurity, will 
add two per cent to the silicon. And now to 
understand the operation of the blast] furnace 
we come to the question, what is iron? 

As a matter of fact, no one has yet been able 
to give a satisfactory definition of just what 
iron really is. It is the most mysterious metal 
of man’s use. It is found more or less in every 
part of the earth. The spectroscope has dis¬ 
covered it in the stars. The meteors that hurl 
through space — maybe the cinders of ex¬ 
ploded comets -— are often huge bowlders of 
iron ore. The forty-ton meteorite which Peary 
brought from the Arctic to the New York Mu¬ 
seum of Natural History is composed almost 
altogether of iron. One eminent geologist tells 
us that “ the earth itself may be an enormous 
iron meteor, covered with a thin layer of rock.” 

Pure iron is as white as silver. Exposed to 
air or water, it tans with rust. We find iron in 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 135 


plants, in animals, in human beings. In every 
hundred persons there is one pound of iron. 
Without it in our systems, we sicken and die. 
It is as necessary to our health as to our civili¬ 
zation. 

High-grade iron ore contains about sixty 
per cent of pure iron. There are a variety 
of other substances — carbon, sulphur, silicon, 
phosphorus. It is these which the blast fur¬ 
nace, and later the converter, endeavor to elim¬ 
inate. Wrought iron is iron with almost all 
of the carbon worked out of it. Cast iron con¬ 
tains from three to ten per cent of carbon. 
Steel is a mixture of iron with a very small 
amount of carbon, distributed very evenly and 
intimately. Curiously enough, the making 
of steel consists of both a forward and a back¬ 
ward step. It is necessary first to burn the 
carbon completely from the ore, or as com¬ 
pletely as possible, producing wrought iron, 
and then work the carbon carefully back again 
under such conditions that its distribution 
can be controlled. Steel is man’s improvement 
on nature. 

For instance, seemingly trivial proportions of 
sulphur and phosphorus in iron ore will make 


136 


CINDERS 


it practically worthless for commercial use, 
because of the brittleness which they impart 
to it. One pound of phosphorus in a thousand 
pounds of iron ore is quite enough to ruin it for 
any mechanical purpose. It was not until we 
learned how to expel the phosphorus — and 
with it the sulphur, quite as destructive — 
that we were able to make steel. Iron is at 
once the strongest and the most timid of metals. 
It hates to be alone. Nothing but the fiercest 
furnace heat will force it to abandon the atoms 
of sulphur and phosphorus, which are its fav¬ 
orite companions. 

As Andrew Carnegie once said: “Sulphur 
and phosphorus are the little yellow devils of 
iron, and we have to fight them, as we do other 
devils, with fire.” 

It was the learning of this fact which lifted 
iron above stone, which made from the crude, 
raw mineral the steel girders of human prog¬ 
ress. In the rugged Minnesota hills, iron ore 
is as cheap as sawdust, an ugly, yellow, lumpy 
dirt. And yet the product of the Mesaba mine 
alone is worth eighteen million dollars a year 
in its raw state. The steel-maker with his 
blast furnace and Bessemer converter increases 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 137 


the value of this yellow stream from five to 
twenty-five times before it finally pours out 
from his roaring fires into the world. 

How long Eric Raymond would have lingered 
spellbound before the wonders of the blast 
furnaces it is hard to say. Even the assured 
young secretary so far forgot his cultivated 
dignity as to stare with every indication of a 
lively interest as a momentary tie-up of the 
flat cars ahead forced the two to a pause. 

“I never thought such things were possible!” 
gasped Eric, forgetting in his excitement the 
aloofness of his companion. “Why, it — it 
makes me think that it is all a weird dream, 
and that I’ll wake up in a minute.” 

“You’ll find it a pretty substantial kind of 
a dream,” said Morton patronizingly. “It 
takes ten tons of ore and coke and limestone 
every minute to feed those furnaces.” 

He might have said one hundred tons and 
Eric would have believed him, as he watched the 
bright liquid iron spurting from the tapping 
holes, and flowing in a snarling stream along 
the sandy bed at the side of the furnaces, where 
a twenty-ton ladle scooped it into a train of 
waiting flat cars. 


138 


CINDERS 


“Is that steel now?” Eric asked. 

“I guess this is your first visit to a steel 
plant,” rejoined Morton with almost a sneer. 
“The blast furnaces only make pig iron. It has 
to go to the mixer, and then to the converter 
before it is steel. Come on! I think we can 
get past those cars now. You will see the con¬ 
verters at work as we go along.” 

Even although Eric was given no time to 
tarry, let us pause a few moments in the con¬ 
verter department of the American Steel plant 
and watch the steel-maker at his day’s work. 
Before us stretches a high, seemingly endless 
room, filled always with a yellow smoke that 
makes the visitor rub his eyes and cough fran¬ 
tically. The steel-maker, however, is used to it. 
Like the fireman, he might appropriately be 
called the “smoke eater.” As we grow used 
to the murk, we see four swaying iron pots, 
shaped like huge eggs. They are twice as 
high as a man, and hung on axles so that they 
can be tilted up and down. These are the Besse¬ 
mer converters. 

Each contains fifteen tons of molten metal. 
They receive iron. They produce steel. With¬ 
out them the steel industry of to-day would 


THE BATTLEGROUND OP STEEL 1S9 


be impossible. There is a warning shout to the 
visitor. Through the two hundred little holes in 
the bottom of the iron pots, a compressed air 
current is being turned. Like a tornado it 
rushes through the metal. The converter roars 
like a volcano in eruption. A billow of red and 
yellow sparks — millions of them, it seems — 
flies a hundred feet into the air. The impurities 
of the iron — the phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, 
and carbon — are being hurled out of the metal. 

The sparks change from red to yellow. 
Suddenly they grow white. 

“All right!” sings out a grimy workman, 
watching intently. “Let her go!” 

The great pot is tilted sideways, gasping 
like a monster in pain. A second workman 
feeds it with several hundred pounds of a car¬ 
bon mixture to restore the carbon that has been 
dislodged. The pot is tilted still farther until 
a lake of white fire gushes from its mouth. 
Now the whole building is filled with sparks 
and thick, whirling fumes that vary in color 
from a light gray to a deep orange. The clothes 
of the workmen in the path of the sparks are 
filled with fine holes. Often the holes penetrate 
to the skin beneath. 


140 


CINDERS 


Under the mouth of the converter a swinging 
ladle is pushed to receive the boiling contents. 
As the ladle is filled, the metal gives out queer 
little wavering blue flames all over its white 
surface. They are weirdly, almost hideously 
beautiful. The steel man calls them the “devil’s 
flower garden.” 

In its turn the ladle swings out over a train 
of flat cars, filled with tall clay pots, and drawn 
by a wheezing little engine. The white-hot 
steel, with its flowers of flame, vanishes in the 
clay receptacles, and the converter is drawn 
back for another fifteen tons of liquid iron. 

We appreciate now that steel is not made 
with hands. Man does little more than touch 
levers. The compressed air blast and the 
hydraulic force, which swings the great con¬ 
verter as easily as a schoolboy does his dinner 
bucket, are controlled by two men sitting on 
a high platform in a corner of the building. By 
the movement of an electric lever the mass 
of iron is operated like clockwork, and with as 
little effort. 

With a snort the little locomotive, attached 
to the flat cars, creeps down a narrow track, 
and out through the swinging doors at the other 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 141 


end of the building. It is bound for the “ soak¬ 
ing pit,” the next step in the making of steel. 
Here a long electric arm reaches down over the 
flat cars, picks up one of the seven-thousand- 
pound steel ingots from the clay pots, and lowers 
it into a great tank of gas-fed fire. The steel 
must be kept at white-heat until it starts on 
the final section of its journey. This may be 
to the rail mill, where it is transformed into 
beams for a bridge in India, or girders for a 
skyscraper in New York, or the ribs of a ship 
to be built in Philadelphia, or perhaps into 
rails for a trunk line up in Canada. Or again, 
the ingot of rough steel may be bound for the 
rolling mill, where it will be made into great 
flat plates for the boiler of a locomotive, or the 
sides of a battleship. Or it may be made into 
square rods, chopped into small pieces, and 
eventually be sent into the world as wire 
nails, or perhaps as a new wire fence for the 
farmer’s barnyard. 

It is in the rail mill, or rolling mill, that we 
find one of the most amazing scenes of the 
steel plant. As we pause in the doorway we 
fancy that the great building is deserted. And 
then as we seek signs of human occupants, 


142 


CINDERS 


there is a roaring, hissing noise from some¬ 
where down in the shadows. A long red-hot 
snake is writhing toward us with incredible 
speed. In the gloom the effect is ghastly. But 
it is not a snake. It is an inanimate steel in¬ 
got, and its motion is supplied by a series of 
black rollers beneath it, which at first glance 
are invisible in the shadows. Suddenly the 
twisting ingot makes a tremendous dive, for 
all the world like a snake springing on its prey. 
It has been caught by another series of rollers. 
For a moment we lose sight of it, and when we 
glimpse it again we see that it has been flattened 
to perhaps half of its first size. And now it is 
turning over, and back, as though a human in¬ 
telligence within the molten metal were direct¬ 
ing its movement. A second time it dives 
through the rollers with a strange crackling noise 
and a cloud of hot, gaseous fumes. Half a dozen 
times the amazing spectacle is repeated, and 
then we see, high up on a small platform over¬ 
head, two men in their shirt-sleeves. With 
seemingly careless movements of their hands 
they are manipulating a series of slender levers. 
It is these insignificant-looking levers which 
control the great rollers, the seven-thousand- 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 143 


horse-power engines behind them, and the fif¬ 
teen-ton ingot, with which they are playing 
like two boys would play with a garden hose. 

Half an hour later, at the other end of the 
mill, a fifth of a mile away, the shapeless steel 
emerges in a series of smoking, glistening rails. 
Not once from the moment its parent, iron, has 
been poured into the throat of the Bessemer 
converter have human hands touched it. Every 
operation, from refining, “ soaking,” flatten¬ 
ing, and the final shaving into the completed 
rails, has been performed by machinery. Man 
has simply acted the part of the task driver. 

The experience of the Carnegie Steel Company 
in the substitution of machinery for human labor 
has been that the plant can profitably spend 
one hundred thousand dollars for machinery that 
will replace the work of one man. A Pittsburg 
steel plant, with two air-generating engines in 
its blast-furnace department, has installed a 
third engine which is always kept idle. And 
yet it cost fifty thousand dollars. The man¬ 
ager explained that if one of the two engines 
in operation should break, the capacity of the 
furnaces would be reduced two hundred and 
fifty tons a day. The reserve engine in such an 


144 CINDERS 

emergency would pay for itself in two weeks’ 
time. 

The critical point in the manufacture of 
steel is that the mill cannot be permitted to 
stop. Its output is not a question of eight 
hours, but of twenty-four hours. One steel 
mill recently estimated the loss of a single hour 
in its running schedule at one thousand dollars. 
Not long ago a careless workman caused a 
break in the air-supply engine of a Pittsburg 
blast furnace, costing eight hundred dollars 
to repair. But the loss in revenue which the 
mill suffered because of the break was over 
four thousand dollars, although the engine was 
in running order again in less than a week. 

This is only one reason why the modern 
steel plant is a wonderland of machinery — 
electric trolleys, rollers, shears, machine stamps, 
chain tables, traveling cranes. Human nerves 
and muscles could not stand the strain. And 
even the steel bolts of machinery are exhausted 
so fast that duplicate apparatus must be kept 
in reserve. All that many of the workmen 
need is an ear to hear an order, an eye to see 
a button, and a finger to press it. Electricity 
does the rest. 


THE BATTLEGROUND OF STEEL 145 

It is not strange that under these conditions 
Eric discovered that in spite of the awe with 
which he regarded the wizardry of the giant 
machinery the men of the mills accepted it as 
a matter of course. One day he noticed a boy, 
perhaps a year younger than himself, sweeping 
the floor of the rolling mills. A new roll had 
just been delivered, but not yet put into posi¬ 
tion. 

“Here, Jim,” sang out the lad to a workman 
above him. “Just move this roll back ten 
feet for me, will you? I want to sweep around 
it.” 

As Eric gasped, a traveling crane slided gently 
over the huge mass, and lifted the twenty- 
thousand-pound obstacle out of the way as 
easily as though it were a box of paper. But 
the boy continued his sweeping without even 
a backward glance. To him there was nothing 
at all marvelous in the performance. He was 
used to the wonders of Steel! 


CHAPTER TEN 

The House of Secrets 

“rpHIS,” said Morton to Eric, “is the open- 
hearth mill. We’ll find Dan Reynolds, 
your prospective new boss, down at furnace No. 
11 at the other end.” He spoke with a percep¬ 
tible accent of relief at the ending of his task of 
guide. It was plain that he would welcome his 
escape from the clang of the machinery and the 
grime of the smoke. 

The emotions of his companion, however, 
passed Eric unheeded. It is doubtful if he 
noticed them. His attention was much too 
engrossed in the scene ahead. Before them 
stretched a building a fifth of a mile long, and 
seeming much longer because of the dim 
murkiness of the air. It was edged all along 
one side by a row of great iron and brick 
bowls, twelve of them, and in each sixty 
four tons of white bubbling iron were boil¬ 
ing into steel. These were the open-hearth 
furnaces. 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 147 


Occasionally there came a gush of the white- 
hot metal from one of the furnaces, pouring 
into ten-ton molds standing in a row on the 
always busy flat cars. When the molds were 
lifted the steel stood up by itself in the shape of 
dull red ingots. As fast as the flat cars were 
filled, the little snorting locomotive at the end 
puffed into action, and glided away into the 
shadows with its precious load, to make room 
for another string of flat cars, and to carry the 
great obelisks of steel, solid on the outside but 
still soft and liquid within, to the soaking 
pit. 

Now and then came a harsh rattling of 
chains, and an electric crane glided down 
the building. Perhaps it would pause over a 
pot of smoking slag, the refuse left over when 
the pure steel has been run from the furnaces. 
From the cage of the operator overhead would 
drop several heavy iron hooks. With a careless 
twist the ladleman at the side of the slag pot 
would catch the hooks under the “lugs” of 
his steaming receptacle. “Lugs” are pieces 
of metal that project from the rim of the pot, 
like ears. Bending down, the operator of the 
one-hundred-ton crane would tighten his chains, 


148 


CINDERS 


push a lever, and glide serenely away with his 
twenty thousand pounds of smoking metal. 
In the operation there was far less noise and 
confusion than in the moving of a piano. 

At one of the last of the furnaces Morton 
touched the arm of a stocky, grizzled-haired 
man in a greasy suit of overalls and jumper. 
As he turned, two details of his appearance 
struck Eric sharply. The overalls and jumper 
were covered with tiny singed holes, much as 
though a hot needle had been through almost 
every inch. And in the flushed face, bent 
toward them, was only one eye. Where the 
left eye should have been was a socket of shriv¬ 
eled flesh. The eye might have been burned 
away. Later Eric found that such was indeed 
the explanation of its loss. The fact, how¬ 
ever, was not so grewsome as might be sup¬ 
posed. Perhaps this was due to the ruddy good 
humor of the rest of the face. Had its owner 
been dressed in a white apron and hat, and 
stationed before a bake-oven instead of a steel 
furnace, he would have answered excellently 
the popular conception of a jolly cook. 

“Have you found a ladle-sculler yet, Dan?” 
asked Morton. 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 149 


The other shook his head, and his sound eye 
turned questioningly toward Eric. 

“In that case,” continued the secretary, 
“Mr. Radcliff says to put this young man to 
work in the morning.” He spoke the words 
“young man” as though an infinite age sepa¬ 
rated himself from Eric. Something like a 
twinkle stole into the foreman’s single eye. 

“All right, Mr. Morton,” he said, with an 
emphasis on the prefix which to anyone else 
but the young secretary would have sounded 
suspicious. “Tell Mr. Radcliff that I’ll give 
him the job.” 

He turned back to the pit of bubbling iron 
and stirred the metal for a moment with a 
long-handled dipper. He withdrew it slowly 
and stared down at the contents of its bowl 
intently. 

“Here, Jack,” he called to a younger man on 
the opposite side of the furnace, “we are getting 
a little too much carbon. Throw some of that 
scrap steel in, will you?” 

It was just like a cook tasting a broth, and 
finding that it needed a pinch more of season¬ 
ing. As Eric turned to catch the effect of the 
words on Morton, he found that the secretary 


150 


CINDERS 


had already gone. Having discharged his 
errand, Mr. Morton evidently thought it un¬ 
necessary to linger. 

As Eric stepped back, uncertain whether or 
not he was expected to take his own departure 
also, a whistle rang through the building. 
Dan Reynolds glanced over his shoulder. 

“Do you like apple pie, youngster? If you 
do, I’ve got the juiciest, plumpest pie in my 
dinner bucket that you ever smacked your 
lips over. Wait a few minutes and we’ll go 
into the yard and sample it.” 

The invitation was given with such hearty 
good humor that Eric flushed. 

“Thank you! I’ll be glad to wait, pie or no 
pie. I would like to ask you a few questions 
about my work, if you don’t mind.” 

Dan Reynolds resumed his study of the fur¬ 
nace, now and then bringing his long dipper into 
play for a critical inspection of the bubbling 
liquid. Afterward Eric learned that by this 
process of “sampling” the quality of the steel 
can be controlled with wonderful accuracy. 
If the liquid iron was too acid, limestone was 
added to the great bowl. If more carbon 
was required, pig iron was thrown into the 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 151 


boiling metal. If too alkaline, silica was used 
to tone it down. If any of the ingredients did 
not “oxidize” fast enough, more iron ore was 
called for, increasing the iron supply and en¬ 
riching the “oxygen content.” And so the 
boiling progressed, for all the world like the 
making of a witch’s broth — except that the 
most ingenious witch never conceived a broth 
half so marvelous. 

The open-hearth process is the second great 
method of making steel. The Bessemer con¬ 
verter gave the world the first. There is this 
difference: the converter boils four tons of steel 
in one minute, and the open-hearth furnace 
requires from eight to ten hours. The product 
of the latter, however, is of a much higher qual¬ 
ity. The flaws resulting from the rapid work 
of the Bessemer converter are eliminated, and 
consequently it is from open-hearth steel that 
our boiler plates and great guns are fashioned, 
where inferior metal might cause fatal conse¬ 
quences. 

At the side of furnace No. 11 two of the 
heavy ladles, used in pouring the liquid iron 
into the molds, were being scraped by a dark¬ 
eyed Hungarian boy, who shot curious, inquir- 


152 


CINDERS 


ing glances at Eric as he wrestled with the 
bits of “frozen” steel clinging to the bottom 
and sides of the awkwardly shaped scoops. 
Eric divined that this was to be his task also, 
and he returned the boy’s stare with interest 
at the thought that he was to be his “scullery 
mate.” He wondered if the other could speak 
English, and was about to put a question to 
him when Dan Reynolds stepped back with a 
sigh of relief as much as to say, “Well, I 
guess that won’t boil over or burn until I get 
back.” 

With a nod to Eric he led the way into the 
wash room, and after a vigorous, and, it must 
be confessed, somewhat ineffectual effort to 
remove the grime and soot from his face and 
neck, he conducted the boy out onto a cinder- 
paved plot of ground at the rear of the build¬ 
ing, and, motioning him to a weather-worn 
bench, opened his battered tin dinner pail. 

“Here are bacon sandwiches, youngster, and 
here is bread and butter with Katie’s own grape 
jelly for good measure. Katie made the apple 
pie I was telling you about. She is the best 
cook in Benton. She is my granddaughter,” 
he added with a shade of importance. 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 153 


Even had Eric not been hungry, and he was 
suddenly conscious that his morning had made 
him decidedly so, the first taste of the expert 
Katie’s lunch would have given a zest to his 
appetite. Dan Reynolds set him the example 
of silence as the contents of the dinner pail 
gradually disappeared. 

With the last crumb of Katie’s apple pie 
accounted for, Eric pointed toward a small, 
square brick building at the other end of the 
yard. Its two visible windows were covered 
with heavy iron shutters, clamped tight, and 
its door was reinforced in the same formidable 
manner. The building looked much like a mau¬ 
soleum. The only sign of life came from a thin 
tongue of smoke, eddying up from a chimney in 
its flat roof. 

Dan Reynolds noted the direction of the 
boy’s glance. “That is the company’s experi¬ 
ment station,” he said. “It is given over to 
‘Silent’ Battles now.” 

Experiment station! Eric’s interest deepened 
as he recalled the adventures of the previous 
day. Was it in this little barricaded building 
where the invention was being perfected, whose 
plans the Trust had endeavored to steal? 


154 


CINDERS 


“Who is ‘Silent’ Battles?” he asked after a 
pause. 

“X reckon a good many persons would like 
to have an answer to that question,” said Dan 
thoughtfully. “All I know is that he came here 
about six months ago, and almost at once the 
company put him to work in the experiment 
building. Most of the time he hasn’t even had 
a helper. And they say he often keeps himself 
shut up for twenty-four hours at a stretch. 
The. men call that the ‘House of Secrets.’ 
I guess some of those secrets are worth mil¬ 
lions.” 

As Eric turned his head he saw Dan Rey¬ 
nolds regarding him curiously. The foreman 
flushed, and shifted his gaze awkwardly. 

“I was comparing you, youngster, with your 
predecessor. He was a young Hun, who knew 
about a dozen words of English.” 

Eric laughed. “Well, if he could do the 
work, I should be able to.” 

“Oh, you won’t have any trouble about that 
when you get the hang — and get used to the 
smoke. Have you known Mr. Radcliff long?” 
Dan broke off abruptly. 

“To-day is the first time I have met him,” 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 155 


Eric answered, conscious that his words were 
adding to Dan’s curiosity. Had it not been for 
Mr. Noraker’s friendly warning he would have 
taken the foreman into his confidence and 
told him the story. To change the subject 
he asked, “Is it really true that Mr. Radcliff 
used to work as a ladle-sculler?” 

Dan was frowning at the ground. It was 
evident that he was trying to explain to him¬ 
self why the superintendent should take such 
a personal interest in a boy he had never seen 
before. He looked up with a start. 

“I reckon it is true, youngster; only that 
was before I came to the mills. John Radcliff 
was superintendent of the open-hearth depart¬ 
ment then. You will find, if you are here long 
enough, that he is one of the coming men in the 
steel business. But he has earned it all with 
his own efforts. Why, he went to ladle-sculling 
the month after he graduated from college.” 

“College?” echoed Eric in amazement. 

Dan nodded. “Mr. Radcliff is a graduate of 
Stevens Institute. But he had the idea that to 
learn the steel business something more than 
school books was necessary. He wanted to 
secure practical experience along with what he 


156 


CINDERS 


had gotten at college. Ladle-sculler was the 
only job open here at the time, so he took 
it.” 

Eric was still staring. The picture of a col¬ 
lege graduate sculling ladles to supplement his 
textbooks was startling, to say the least. 
He would have been still more amazed had he 
known that on one occasion, after eight hours 
at the furnaces, John Radcliff presented him¬ 
self at a class banquet in immaculate evening 
clothes and made the most applauded speech 
on the program. 

“They had what they called the c twenty- 
four hour shift’ here at that time,” went on 
Dan Reynolds. “On every alternate Sunday, 
every man in the open-hearth building worked 
from seven in the morning until seven o’clock 
Monday morning. So John Radcliff didn’t 
have what you would call a ‘cinch.’ But I have 
known him to work seventy-two hours without 
a wink of sleep. And he got one of his first 
big steps up by doing it. 

“He was stationed in the rail mill at the time. 
There had been an explosion in the pump 
room, blowing out two sheets in a steam pipe 
and killing three men and a boy. A steel mill 


i 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 157 


is a good deal like a railroad when it comes to 
an accident. The damage has got to be re¬ 
paired at once. There isn’t time to study 
about it. The explosion occurred on Sunday 
afternoon, just as John Radcliff was getting 
ready to go home. Instead of going home he 
took off his coat, put his overalls back on, 
and stayed on the repair job until Wednesday 
evening. All his meals were brought in to him 
in a tin bucket. At seven o’clock Wednesday 
night the pipe was again in working order. 
What do you think he did then?” 

“Tumbled into bed and slept forty-eight 
hours,” hazarded Eric. 

“That is what you or I would have done, but 
not John Radcliff. He went to the opera. Next 
to steel, his great hobby is music. Another time, 
when our rail mill at Joliet was frozen up by 
a hard winter, Radcliff stayed in the plant a 
whole week, with only a chair for a bed. He 
kept the mill from a complete breakdown 
and saved the company a good many thousand 
dollars, but he did it at the cost of seven nights’ 
sleep. Oh, you won’t wonder, after you know 
the mills, why he is superintendent. There 
isn’t a man here who puts in the hours that he 


158 


CINDERS 


does even now. We see him leave his office in 
the evening, but at midnight the men at the 
rail mill or rolling mill may see him come in, 
take off his coat, and work until morning. 
That is John Radcliff. If he should leave the 
American plant I believe that five hundred 
of the men would petition to go with him. 

“Once he was knocked twenty feet by a stray 
crowbar; and on another occasion the top of 
his hat was shaved off by a hot rail. At first 
they thought his scalp was seriously injured, 
too, and every hour they gave out bulletins 
of his condition to the men. President Fordham 
took him away for a month’s cruise in his yacht 
after that, but in less than two weeks John 
Radcliff was back again. He said that resting 
was only for a sick man, or a woman, and that 
he wasn’t either.” 

Dan Reynolds ended his story and sprang 
to his feet so suddenly that he knocked his 
dinner bucket to the ground with a clatter. A 
group of the foreign laborers had rounded 
a corner of the open-hearth building in a chorus 
of shouts and jeers. Laughing and pushing 
each other, they gathered about an electric 
dynamo that had been left in the yard during 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 159 


the noon hour. Among the number Eric 
recognized Dan Reynolds’ young Hungarian 
ladle-sculler. 

As the crowd parted somewhat, a burly-whisk¬ 
ered Slav bent over the dynamo and fumbled 
with its mechanism. An angry tongue of 
blue flame snapped out from its wheels like the 
tongue of a snake. The Slav straightened and 
faced toward the young Hungarian with a sneer. 
Although Eric could not hear his words, nor 
have understood them if he had heard them, 
the import of his gesture and attitude made his 
meaning sufficiently plain. To entertain the 
crowd, he was daring the Hun boy to take hold 
of the flaming wire of the dynamo, and the 
latter, in his ignorance of the danger, was pre¬ 
paring, with flushed face, to accept the chal¬ 
lenge. 

Dan Reynolds’ warning shout fell unheeded. 
Repeating his cry, the foreman ran forward, 
but it was evident that he would reach the scene 
too late. The young Hun was already stooping 
toward the dynamo, while the crowd fell back, 
prepared to applaud, or to flee in the event of 
a catastrophe. 

At that moment the iron-shuttered door of the 


160 


CINDERS 


experiment house was flung open. Into the 
yard sprang a tall, gray-haired man, with a 
blue-jeaned apron, such as a machinist wears, 
hanging down from his shoulders and flapping 
about his legs. In half a dozen bounds, it seemed 
to Eric, he was at the dynamo. With his left 
hand he thrust the Hun boy sprawling back¬ 
ward. Then, whirling, he caught the Slav 
with his right hand, and in spite of the other’s 
size lifted him clear off the ground and shook 
him as a terrier shakes a rat. 

Back and forth he flung the man, until 
his teeth chattered, and he gasped for mercy. 
Not until then did he drop him. Stooping, 
the newcomer shut off the dynamo, and with 
a glance of contempt at the cowering crowd 
turned and strode back to the experiment 
house. A moment later the heavy door clanged 
behind him. Not once during the whole in¬ 
cident had he spoken a word. 

“‘Silent’ Battles!” said Dan Reynolds, walk¬ 
ing back to Eric. “He is a whirlwind, isn’t 
he?” 

But Eric was staring toward the iron door 
of the experiment house, and did not answer. 
The foreman turned toward the boy curiously. 


THE HOUSE OF SECRETS 161 


“What is the matter?” 

Eric aroused himself with a deep breath. 

“That man might be Oliver Cromwell of 
the old Ironsides!” 

“I don’t rightly remember Oliver Cromwell,” 
said Dan, “but I guess ‘Ironsides’ hits ‘Silent’ 
Battles just about right.” 

Eric mechanically reached down and picked 
up Dan’s dinner pail. He was conscious of a 
wild wish to know more of the House of Secrets, 
and of the strange, silent man who toiled in 
secret behind its barred doors. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 
Kelly and his Converter 

JF Mrs. Raymond did not appreciate the 

wonders of the steel industry during the 
two hours following Eric’s return home, it was 
certainly through no fault either in the elo¬ 
quence or the enthusiasm of her son. When 
Eric finally sat down to supper, a search of all 
Benton would not have found a more excited 
youth. 

His mother had fallen asleep when Eric 
arose from the table, and the boy softly took 
his cap from the hook with the purpose of 
calling on the Norakers. 

He had reached the front gate when he caught 
the vaguely familiar outlines of a figure ap¬ 
proaching on the walk. 

“Hello, Mr. Reynolds!” he called. 

The foreman stopped. “Why, it is the young¬ 
ster! Is this where you live?” 

“This is the place. Won’t you come in?” 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 163 


And then, as the other hesitated, he added, 
“mother is asleep, and we can have the sitting 
room to ourselves.” 

“Well, I don’t care if I do drop in for a spell.” 
Dan opened the gate and took his pipe from 
his mouth. 

“Oh, go on with your smoking,” laughed 
Eric. “I am sure mother won’t mind.” He 
led his visitor into the cottage and pushed 
a rocking chair hospitably toward him. Dan 
accepted the chair with a sigh of contentment. 
Eric saw that his mother was still sleeping, and 
gently closed her door. 

“There must be a wonderful history con¬ 
nected with the making of steel,” he said, 
drawing a chair up opposite Dan. 

Dan’s single eye gazed at the boy reflectively. 

“Wonderful?” he grunted. “The story of 
steel makes that book called the ‘Arabian 
Nights’ seem as dry as — as an epitaph on a 
tomb-stone.” 

Eric smiled. He was already beginning 
to appreciate Dan Reynolds’ amazing figures 
of speech. 

“One Sunday afternoon last fall,” went on 
Dan, “I was up at the public library. The 


164 


CINDERS 


young man who runs things — I reckon you’d 
call him a foreman down here at the mill — 
brought out two or three books from the stock 
room. ‘I think there is something you would 
like,’ he said, — something that will take you 
away from the grind of machinery. These are 
among the greatest romances in the English 
language.’ 

“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘there is more romance 
in the grind of machinery than in all the story¬ 
books ever written. Did you ever hear of Bill 
Jones, or Bill Kelly?’ 

“The young man rubbed his glasses, thought¬ 
ful like. ‘Can you tell me any of the books 
they have written?’ And he was serious about 
it, too.” Dan knocked out his pipe against 
the palm of his hand with an expression of 
profound disgust. “The ignorance of some 
people is astonishing. And that young man 
was supposed to have a little extra amount of 
schooling.” 

Eric turned away. He didn’t want Dan to 
see the laugh he was trying to smother, and he 
didn’t want him to see the question in his eyes 
either. To tell the truth, he had never heard of 
the celebrities, Bill Jones or Bill Kelly, himself. 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 165 


Perhaps, however, the very fact of his silence 
would induce Dan to explain. 

“You probably think I am an old man, 
youngster. Maybe I am, from your way of 
looking at it, and yet when I was born steel 
was almost unheard of in this country. The 
history of the steel industry really goes back 
only about fifty years. I thought that would 
surprise you,” he chuckled at Eric’s stare. 

“When Andrew Carnegie’s parents emigrated 
with him from Scotland, steel was selling for 
twenty-five cents a pound. A ton of steel 
costing four or five dollars to-day would have 
been worth five hundred dollars then. I 
wonder how much it would cost to ride on a 
railroad if the rails had been made of steel at 
that price! The Civil War gave the steel and 
iron business its first big boom. I guess the 
big share of the three billion dollars that the 
war cost Uncle Sam went to the iron men. After 
the war, the country began to realize that it 
had to have a new kind of metal. Iron even in 
guns wore out too fast. The iron ties of the 
railroads lasted only two years. We had to 
have something stronger than iron, and as 
cheap as iron. 


166 


CINDERS 


“It was about this time that Bill Kelly 
came into the history of steel. Kelly had a 
small iron works in Kentucky, making his iron 
in what was called a 4 finery fire ’— a small 
furnace in which about fifteen hundred pounds 
of pig iron could be heated between two layers 
of charcoal. The blast of the charcoal was 
turned on, and more charcoal was added 
until the iron was refined to the proper degree 
for factory use. Kelly used most of his iron 
in the manufacture of kettles, which he sold 
to the Kentucky farmers, and to a jobbing 
house in Cincinnati. He was doing a fairly good 
business, when he found that the wood near 
his furnace was being exhausted, and the nearest 
place where he could secure another supply was 
seven miles away. If he had to haul his char¬ 
coal this distance, it meant bankruptcy. 

“Maybe it was this fact that quickened his 
brain. One day he was watching his ‘finery 
fire’ when he jumped to his feet with a shout 
and rushed over to the furnace like a man who 
has suddenly lost his senses. At one edge of 
the furnace he saw a small white-hot spot in 
the yellow mass of sputtering metal. The iron 
was heated to the point of incandescence — 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 167 


and yet there was no charcoal near it, nothing 
but a steady .blast of cold air. Why didn’t 
the air cool the metal? In the answer to the 
question Kelly found the secret of making 
steel. 

“I have never studied chemistry, youngster, 
but I know enough to understand how Kelly 
figured it out. You see, carbon and oxygen have 
what they call in chemistry an ‘ affinity 9 for each 
other. And carbon comes from iron, and 
oxygen from the air. When the cold air is 
blown into hot metal, the oxygen unites with 
the impurities of the iron, carries them off, and 
leaves the pure iron behind. Kelly had seen 
that air alone was fuel. 

“Of course, the whole town thought he had 
gone crazy when he explained his discovery. 
The idea of cold air heating iron, heating it to 
a more intense degree than the hottest charcoal 
fire! It was ridiculous. Kelly met the jeers 
by inviting a number of iron workers to his 
mill. He wasn’t a business man, or he would 
never have done it until he had taken out 
patents. While his visitors gathered about his 
furnace, Kelly sent a current of cold air into 
the midst of the hot pig iron. At once it changed 


168 


CINDERS 


from yellow to a pure white. A blacksmith 
seized a piece of the mysterious substance with 
a pair of tongs, cooled it in water, and in twenty 
minutes had pounded out a perfect pair of horse¬ 
shoes. Then, with a second piece, he fashioned 
half a dozen nails and drove the shoe to the 
hoof of a horse. Pig iron, of course, cannot 
be hammered into anything. With an ounce 
of charcoal Kelly transformed comparatively 
worthless pig iron into valuable malleable 
iron. 

“ ' Some crank will be burning ice in a furnace 
next/ sneered one of the spectators. But 
Kelly had proven his point. Later he called 
his invention the 'pneumatic process/ but 
in Kentucky it was always known as 'Kelly’s 
air boiler.’” 

"And what became of Kelly and what did 
he do with his invention?” asked Eric, absorbed 
in the story. 

"His father-in-law was advancing the capital 
for his furnace. When he heard what Kelly 
was doing he thought that his son-in-law had 
gone insane, and wrote him, 'If you don’t 
quit this foolishness, I will quit you.’ His 
customers in Cincinnati who had been buying 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 169 

his kettles heard of his experiments, and said, 
'We understand you have taken up a new¬ 
fangled way of refining your iron. We want 
our kettles made in the regular way, or not at 
all.’ And to add to Kelly’s troubles, his ore 
supply gave out. 

“He was forced to move his furnace to another 
section, and in order to keep his father-in-law’s 
backing and hold his customers was obliged 
to return to the old charcoal methods of opera¬ 
tion. But he couldn’t dismiss his new idea. 
It had taken possession of him so completely 
that one night, with the help of two of his 
workmen, he moved a rough converter he had 
built into a secluded section of the woods near 
his plant. He was determined to continue his 
experiments until he compelled the world to 
believe in him. 

“In all, he built seven different types of 
converters in his backwoods hiding place, the 
fact of his labors unknown to anyone except 
the two men whom he had employed to assist 
him. His first apparatus was a square brick 
structure, four feet high, with a cylindrical 
chamber. The bottom was perforated for the 
blast, and as the operator released the air cur- 


170 


CINDERS 


rent he poured the melted pig iron into the 
chamber with a ladle. The operation was a 
success about three times out of five. The 
greatest difficulty was to make an air current 
strong enough for the purpose. 

“ Kelly went to work from another angle, and 
made a second converter with holes in the 
sides instead of in the bottom. This worked 
better. Gradually he brought his apparatus 
to a point where it could do ninety minutes’ work 
of the old methods in ten minutes. Also he 
had cut the cost of his fuel by half. In 1856 
the country was startled by the news that 
Henry Bessemer, an Englishman of French 
descent, had taken out United States patents 
for a converter depending on air as its refining 
agent. Kelly at his secret labors in the woods 
was shocked to learn that the Bessemer idea 
was practically the same as his own. The time 
had come for him to declare himself, to come 
out from his concealment. He filed a claim 
of priority invention at Washington, and finally 
the American patent office recognized his claim 
over that of Bessemer. But even now Kelly 
was not to come into his own. I am not much 
of a reader, youngster, but it seems to me that 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 171 


nearly every big inventor of history, who has 
thought of something that really was going 
to help the world, has had to fight against every 
kind of obstacle before he could make himself 
appreciated. And the bigger the invention the 
harder the fight to make the world see it. 

“Kelly had hardly won his patent fight at 
Washington when the famous panic of 1857 
swept the country, and he found himself in 
bankruptcy. Almost without a dollar, he went 
to the Cambria Iron Works at Johnstown, 
Pennsylvania, and induced the general superin¬ 
tendent to give him a corner of the yard in 
which to continue his experiments. In a short 
time he finished his eighth converter, and an¬ 
nounced that he was ready for a public exhi¬ 
bition. Nearly two hundred workmen gathered 
around the queer-looking apparatus, many of 
whom were ‘puddlers,’ whose occupation would 
be lost if he succeeded. 

“‘Give me the strongest blast you can blow,’ 
said Kelly to the engineer in charge of the air¬ 
generating machine that supplied his con¬ 
verter. The engineer turned on the air with 
such good will that the whole contents of the 
converter went flying into the yard in a tornado 


172 


CINDERS 


of sparks, amid the jeers of the crowd. While 
air will remove first the impurities of the iron, 
it will carry away the metal itself if the blast 
is too strong. 

“The next week Kelly said he was ready for 
another trial. This time he made sure that the 
air was supplied with proper strength and 
regularity. When the sparks began to fly from 
the converter, he ran to and fro, picking them 
up and hammering them on an anvil. For 
nearly half an hour every spark crumbled under 
his blows, showing that the metal was still in 
the pig-iron state. And then suddenly a spark, 
instead of crumpling to pieces, flattened out 
like dough into a solid surface under his hammer. 
Immediately Kelly tilted his converter and 
poured out its contents. Seizing a segment of 
the white-hot metal, he dipped it into water 
and hammered it into a thin plate. He had 
won at last. He had built a converter that was 
a practical success. Kelly remained at Johns¬ 
town for five years, selling a controlling interest 
in his converter to the Cambria Iron Company, 
that had made it possible for him to complete 
his experiments. In twenty years he received 
over half a million dollars in royalties.” 


KELLY AND HIS CONVERTER 173 


“Then he was well paid for all his struggles 
after all,” said Eric. 

“Not nearly so well as Bessemer in England,” 
replied Dan Reynolds. “He was paid ten mil¬ 
lion dollars, given the title of knight, and had 
the new process named after him. This was 
due largely to the fact that when the time 
came to renew Kelly’s patent the American 
iron makers supported Bessemer’s claim. Had 
the latter won instead of Kelly they would 
have been able to use the new converters with¬ 
out the necessity of paying royalties. To-day 
we can understand how unjust was their fight. 

“It was Kelly who introduced Europe to 
American factories — or American factories to 
Europe — whichever way you want to have it. 
Before his time our industries had been re¬ 
garded abroad a good deal as a college senior 
looks on a high-school freshman. Shortly after 
Kelly won his patent, Disston, the Philadel¬ 
phia manufacturer, sold a hundred thousand 
dollars’ worth of saws in Europe in one year. 
And then the North British Railroad Company 
bought an American steam shovel for fifteen 
thousand dollars — the first ever seen in Eng¬ 
land. Not long afterward an American travel- 


174 


CINDERS 


ing man actually went to Sheffield — Sheffield! 
•— the very heart of the English steel and iron 
industry — and had the effrontery to offer a 
consignment of hoes, hay forks, and spades 
for sale. And what was more, he convinced 
the British dealers that they were neater, 
handier, and cheaper than those they could 
buy at home. But the climax was reached 
when Englishmen found themselves riding be¬ 
hind an American locomotive on a British rail¬ 
road. Their outburst of outraged patriotism, 
however, was not able to meet the fact that even 
adding the cost of shipment the locomo¬ 
tive cost one thousand dollars less than the 
lowest estimate at which it could be made in 
an English factory.” 


CHAPTER TWELVE 
The Story of Bill Jones 


T~\AN REYNOLDS slowly refilled his pipe. 

“Are you getting tired, youngster?” 

“Not at all,” said Eric eagerly. 

Dan smiled. He was evidently in a mood for 
story-telling. 

“Take the history of Bill Jones, the greatest 
steel man who ever lived. If it hadn’t been for 
him there probably wouldn’t be any steel to-day 
— at least not the kind of steel we know. And 
yet they never think of Bill Jones when they 
are putting up monuments and talking about 
who ought to go into the Hall of Fame. 

“They tell me you can still see the house 
where Bill lived when he was a boy back in 
Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, one of the Carnegie 
steel towns. Bill’s father was a pattern maker 
who had emigrated from Wales, and Bill 
went to work in the mill when he was ten years 
old. In the mill towns of those days the boy 
of ten who wasn’t working was looked upon as 


176 


CINDERS 


a failure in life, and a disgrace to his parents. 
From all accounts Bill must have been a good 
bit different from the other youngsters of the 
neighborhood. His father was a quiet, sober 
man, given to reading religious tracts and histo¬ 
ries at night, and Bill used to lie on the floor 
for hours spelling out the big words. But the 
reading didn’t have any effect on him in one 
way. He had the name of being the most 
reckless boy in town. One day he cut off his 
thumb-nail to see what was underneath. 

“When he was eighteen, Bill moved to 
Johnstown, then one of the big iron centers of 
the country, and worked up to foreman in the 
Cambria mills. There was nothing to mark him 
as any different from other mill men at this time, 
except his good nature. Often he would stop 
work and take his whole force to see a ball 
game. Along about this time the Kelly or Besse¬ 
mer way of making steel was introduced in this 
country. England was then the center of the 
steel trade. She was making as much steel in 
one year as we did in four years. I guess Bill’s 
books helped him to learn the new method, 
and understand what it meant. At any rate 
it wasn’t long before he was saying coolly that 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 177 


he thought he could improve on it. They all 
laughed at him; but when Andrew Carnegie took 
over the new steel plaijt at Braddock he heard 
of Bill’s boasting, and offered to give him a 
chance to show what he could do. Carnegie 
was always looking for men who thought they 
could do something better than other men. 

“In his first fifteen weeks at Braddock, 
Bill Jones’ new ideas, which the workmen at 
Johnstown had laughed at, turned out twice 
as much steel as the plant had ever been able 
to make before in the same time, and at the end 
of a year he was making as much steel in one 
week as the other mills in the country were 
producing in six weeks. In one day the con¬ 
verters at Braddock, with Bill Jones’ improve¬ 
ments, were producing over six hundred tons,— 
more than thirty thousand dollars’ worth. 

“The English steel-makers called the story 
of Jones a fairy tale. When the British Iron 
and Steel Institute met in 1881, someone 
suggested that the c crazy American’ be invited 
to make a written statement of what he was 
doing. So it came about that Bill Jones in his 
greasy overalls received a high-sounding note 
with an engraved heading, and signed by a man 


178 


CINDERS 


who wrote ‘Bart.’ after his name. I reckon 
Bill’s book-learning told him what it meant. 
At any rate, he put in his evenings answering 
the letter. It was what might be called our 
industrial declaration of independence. It in¬ 
formed England that she no longer led the 
world in steel, and that in future she was to be 
second to the United States. 

“Bill Jones was just beginning to find himself. 
It was as though he was pouring out every day 
a river of gold. When one shift of men finished, 
another shift took its place. The output of 
steel ran up to twenty-five tons an hour for 
every hour of the day and night. As fast as 
Bill saw where he could make an improvement, 
he had the old machinery torn down and thrown 
in the scrap heap. Several times he destroyed 
half a million dollars’ worth of equipment. 
By this time the great Carnegie Steel Company 
had come into being, and Bill was being paid 
twenty-five thousand dollars a year. But he still 
wore his overalls and carried his dinner bucket, 
as though he were working for day wages. 
Carnegie offered him an interest in the com¬ 
pany, but Bill didn’t want it. ‘I am not a 
business man,’ he said, ‘I’m a steel man.’ He 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 179 


could have been a millionaire by simply say¬ 
ing ‘Thank you/ 

“When I worked in Bradford, Bill would 
storm up and down the shops something like 
this: ‘Do you get enough fresh air in that cor¬ 
ner, Joe? If you don’t, I’ll have a window put 
in for you!’ 

“Or, ‘See here, Smith, if you don’t pay your 
debts, you can’t work for me. You settle 
with that grocer of yours, or I’ll find out why.’ 

“Or, ‘When you are going home to-night, 
Jim, take this piece of paper to Jack Sullivan’s 
wife. Jack died in the hospital last night, 
and she has five children.’ The piece of paper 
was a deed to the cottage where Mrs. Sullivan 
lived. That was Bill Jones. When they 
made his salary fifty thousand dollars a year, 
I don’t think Bill ever thought of it. He was 
too much interested in making steel.” 

Dan Reynolds paused. When he continued, 
there was a little catch in his voice. 

“I will never forget the day that Bill was 
killed. One of the furnaces had gone wrong — 
‘bridged up,’ as they call it in the mill. That is, 
the metal inside had been jammed up, and of 
course the furnace was out of commission until 


180 


CINDERS 


the jam was broken. Bill was leading a gang 
that was trying to put the furnace in running 
order, working side by side with a Hun at 
a dollar and a quarter a day. Suddenly the 
‘bridge’ gave way, and the red-hot metal 
that had been caught underneath crashed clear 
through the outside wall. The men at the side 
of the furnace jumped back in time to save 
themselves, all except two. One was Bill Jones, 
and the other was the Hungarian workman at 
his shoulder. I guess, maybe, if Bill had been 
asked how he preferred to die, that is the way 
he would have chosen — on the firing line.” 

For several minutes Dan Reynolds was silent. 
Had Eric been a student of psychology he 
would have realized that the silence was a more 
eloquent tribute to the memory of Bill Jones, 
steel-maker, than a flowery oration. Finally 
the boy ventured dubiously, “With the tre¬ 
mendous output of iron and steel every year, 
won’t we soon have more than the world can 
use? Won’t the demand be exhausted, and the 
mills have to stop?” 

“That is the question the steel men used to 
ask themselves twenty years ago,” said Dan, 
laughing. “And yet we have more than twice 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 181 


as many mills and furnaces to-day as we had 
then. Mr. Radcliff gave the men at the plant 
a series of lectures last winter. He said that 
a new use for steel is arising every day. I 
remember he said that if all our six hundred 
rolling mills were arranged in a circle around 
Pittsburg, for instance, that the circle would 
be more than a hundred miles in diameter. 
Inside this circle we could put another circle 
three quarters as large, comprising our five 
hundred smaller mills and our three thousand 
puddling furnaces. Our six hundred open-hearth 
plants would give us another circle fifty miles 
across — and our four hundred blast furnaces 
would make still a fourth circle thirty-five miles 
in diameter. But we are not done. In the 
center we would have a hub of fire, from our 
three hundred Bessemer furnaces, a mile around, 
and pouring out a river of steel at the rate of 
over two million pounds every hour of the day 
and night. And even this is not enough to 
supply the demand. 

“It is only a question of time until the rail¬ 
roads will have to buy steel ties as well as steel 
rails. The Baltimore and Ohio, New York Cen¬ 
tral, Erie, Lake Shore, and Pennsylvania are al- 


182 


CINDERS 


ready adopting them. The railroads buy one 
eighth of all the steel produced, and a ton of 
steel ties will only go about half as far as a ton 
of steel rails. 

“ Steel cars are coming into service,- replac¬ 
ing the old wooden ones. One company has 
sold fourteen million dollars’ worth of pressed 
steel cars in six years. Only a short time ago 
the Erie Railroad adopted the first steel bag¬ 
gage car in this country. 

“Then there are the cities of the future. 
They will be built of steel instead of wood or 
brick or stone. What we call c expanded steel,’ 
a sort of thin mesh, is even replacing laths in 
the building of houses. We are making our fac¬ 
tories of corrugated iron instead of brick. In 
Germany the first absolute 6 fireproof ’ building 
material has been patented — a combination of 
steel and cement. The big fires that have 
swept our cities in the last ten years show that 
a steel frame for a building is not enough. 
Wood must be eliminated entirely. Several 
steel churches have been erected, made wholly 
of steel, and stone, and cement. The great 
subway in New York City is a thirty-mile tube 
of steel and cement, and the elevated railroad 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 183 


is a thirty-mile steel bridge. And the time is 
coming when every large city will have to put 
its transportation system either under the 
ground, or overhead. In a big skyscraper, ten 
thousand tons of steel are used, and we are 
putting up a new skyscraper nearly every week. 

“Take just one item of steel manufacture — 
wire. Do you know that there are twice 
as many millions invested in wire as in struc¬ 
tural steel? The day is coming, Mr. Radcliff 
said in his lectures, when wire will require 
more of the output of the steel mills than even 
rails. Out of every ten pounds of steel manu¬ 
factured, one pound is made into wire. Just 
think of the thousands of uses of wire! In 
one cable of the Brooklyn Bridge there are 
over six thousand separate strands. We can 
make the cage of a tiger from wire, or we can 
build a piano from it, or we can make it into 
the hairspring of a watch. In one year the 
cotton dealers pay two millions and a half for 
binding strips for their cotton bales. One fac¬ 
tory in Chicago produces three million pounds 
of wire carpet tacks in a year. In one month 
this country uses over one million kegs of wire 
nails. 


184 


CINDERS 


“Getting back to the general field of steel, 
the profits of a single order of a big steel mill 
may mean a fortune. Take the new five- 
hundred-foot steel dry dock at New Orleans; 
the wonderful steel chimney of the Nichols 
Chemical Company of Brooklyn, over three 
hundred feet high; the Manhattan Bridge; 
the new engine of the United States Steel 
Corporation at Youngstown, weighing over 
one million pounds; the three flumes that have 
been laid at Niagara Falls, eighteen feet in 
diameter and a mile long; James J. Hill’s 
new steel elevators at Superior, Wisconsin, 
each with a capacity of three million bushels 
of grain. 

“We are making nearly two hundred steel 
bathtubs every day. Steel furniture factories 
are being built. Thousands of our barrels are 
coming from the steel mill instead of the 
cooper-shop; and as we use three hundred mil¬ 
lion barrels a year you can see the market for 
the steel mills. Four blocks of steel roadway 
have been laid in New York City, and the presi¬ 
dent of the American Automobile Association 
says that eventually there will be such a road 
all the way from New York to San Francisco. 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 185 


“And these are just a few of the uses of steel. 
Should there ever be another great war, the 
steel mills would be hopelessly swamped under 
their orders. The deciding agents of that war 
would not be generalship, or fighting qualities, 
but money and steel. In their assault on 
Port Arthur the Japanese fired two thousand 
tons of shells. That single engagement cost 
Japan and Russia over sixty million dollars — 
most of which went to the steel and iron makers. 
The death of every soldier at Port Arthur 
cost more than his weight in iron. 

“No, youngster, I guess there is no need 
of your worrying about the market for steel 
giving out. There is one plant in Chicago 
that makes seven steel rails a minute. Every* 
second of its operation means a revenue of 
one dollar and a half. 

“Do you know that high-grade steel is more 
costly than either gold or silver? Watch-screws, 
for instance, are worth $1,585 a pound, and hair¬ 
springs $3,000 a pound. We would have to pay 
about twenty-five pounds of solid gold for two 
pounds of these nine-inch threads of steel. 

“On the other hand, a great steel plant re¬ 
quires an investment of millions before it can 


186 


CINDERS 


even begin operations. Some of the figures 
that Mr. Radcliff gave us along this line made 
us stare. A million dollars is a tremendous 
sum of money, but it would cost ten millions to 
start in the steel business even in a small way. 
The Lackawanna steel plant in Buffalo cost 
forty million dollars to equip. Some of its 
machines cost as much as a skyscraper. Its 
gas engines alone meant an investment of nearly 
one million dollars apiece.” 

Eric drew a deep breath. Dan Reynolds 
was right. Compared to the story of Steel, 
“The Arabian Nights” was thrust to the 
background. And the story of Steel was a 
true romance! 

“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “that 
new inventions, new ways of doing things, 
must be coming up in steel-making all the 
time.” 

Dan nodded. 

“Some day the steel companies will join 
together in a department of invention and 
experiment for the trying out of new ideas. 
Take the ‘dry blast’ experiments. The air 
that is blown into a blast furnace in the course 
of an hour contains from forty to three hundred 


THE STORY OF BILL JONES 187 


gallons of water. This, of course, eats up coke 
and reduces the heat. Vice-president Gayler 
of the United States Steel Corporation is work¬ 
ing on a plan to carry the air current first 
through an ammonia chamber, which draws 
out the moisture in the form of frost. When 
the ammonia chamber is clogged with frost, 
a sort of dry, hot brine continues on into the 
furnace. Already the new idea has been de¬ 
veloped to a point where it produces twenty 
per cent more steel in a day than the old methods. 

“And then there is the electric smelter. 
This was Kelly’s dream. He believed that steel 
can be made direct from the ore, without either 
the blast furnace or the converter. Already 
the electric furnace is being used, but it is too 
expensive to be practical for general purposes. 
The Canadian government has appropriated 
fifteen thousand dollars for experiments along 
this line, and Edison is spending a large share of 
his fortune in the same direction. If it is ever 
a real success, it will revolutionize the steel 
industry. The electric smelter is hardly larger 
than an ordinary bake oven, and can be carried 
from place to place like a saw mill. It could 4 
be set up at the mouth of an ore mine and make 


188 


CINDERS 


the ore into high-grade steel as fast as it could 
be brought to the surface. 

“ Quality, not quantity, is coming to be the 
goal of the steel mills. We can make enough 
ordinary steel, and now we are trying to make 
better steel.” 

“Is that what ‘Silent’ Battles is experiment¬ 
ing for?” asked Eric suddenly. 

Dan’s eye closed with a motion expressive 
of a wink. 

“That is the company’s secret. But to tell 
the truth, I don’t know. I might guess. We 
all have done a good bit of guessing, and from 
all accounts there are those who have tried to 
do more. But when it comes down to facts—” 

Eric tried to conceal his disappointment. 
He would have been a very much amazed 
youth had he known how soon and under 
what circumstances he was to be ushered into 
the secret of “Silent” Battles — and what an 
effect it was destined to have on his life. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

Grazing Death 

JN the office of a certain famous manufac¬ 
turer there hangs a battered dinner bucket. 
A friend once laughingly asked the explanation 
of its presence. 

“That is one of my most cherished pos¬ 
sessions,” was the answer. “It is the pail in 
which I carried my lunch on my first job.” 

Had Eric Raymond paused to define his 
thoughts on the morning on which he tumbled 
out of bed to the tinkle of the alarm clock, 
set at half-past five o’clock, and realized that 
in just an hour he was due at the American 
steel plant to begin the first day in his new 
life, he would have appreciated the sentiment. 
On the kitchen table rested the pail in which 
he had carried his mid-day lunch the previous 
summer at the tool factory, and the servant 
girl, whom Mrs. Raymond had been obliged 
to employ until she could resume her house¬ 
hold duties, was fastening down the lid as he 


190 


CINDERS 


entered the room. The pail seemed to blink 
a cheery welcome to him, for all the world as 
though it was saying, “Well, here I am again, 
all ready for duty, you see. And I know as 
well as you do that I am going on something 
more than a vacation job this time!” 

Mrs. Raymond was already awake when he 
stole a glance into her room, with his cap in his 
right hand and his bucket hung over his left arm. 

“Isn’t this a little early for you, Mumsy?” 
he laughed. 

“Do you think I would let you go off on your 
first morning without saying good-by?” pro¬ 
tested Mrs. Raymond. “Why, you look just 
like a real working man!” 

“Wait until you see me to-night! You may 
have to order an extra supply of soap before 
you will be able to recognize me.” 

Mrs. Raymond drew him over and kissed 
him. As the boy straightened he knew that 
his mother’s lips were moving in a whispered 
prayer. 

The Raymond cottage was not located in 
the steel-mill district, and it was not until Eric 
had covered half a dozen blocks that he met the 
stream of workmen hurrying toward the Amer- 


GRAZING DEATH 


191 


ican mills. He fell in beside them, conscious , 
that several curious glances were directed 
toward him. He returned the glances with a 
lively interest, hoping to find Dan Reynolds 
in the throng. But the foreman was not there. 

He fancied, however, that he caught sight 
of a familiar figure just ahead, and quickened 
his steps as the figure turned. It was the 
Hungarian ladle-sculler of furnace No. 11. The 
other recognized Eric at the same moment, and 
a shy grin spread over his face. 

“Good morning!” said Eric, to test his com¬ 
panion’s knowledge of English. 

Rather to his surprise, the young Hungarian 
appeared to understand him easily. “ Morning!” 
he answered somewhat haltingly. “You and 
me, we are to work together, yes?” 

Eric nodded as he fell into step. “That 
is what Mr. Reynolds says. My name is 
Eric Raymond. What is yours?” 

The grin again spread over the young Hun¬ 
garian’s face.* “My name, it is Walter Stel- 
maszyk.” He showed two rows of very white 
teeth as Eric tried to pronounce it after him. 

“Have you worked in the mills long?” con¬ 
tinued Eric, laughing with him. 


192 


CINDERS 


“ Fourteen, fifteen months. I like it, like 
it very much. My brother, he worked here 
before I come, but he was killed last month 
in rail mill. Rail mill very bad place!” The 
boy shuddered expressively. Eric saw, now 
that he had opportunity to observe him closely, 
that he was very little older than himself. 

“You and your brother were here alone?” 
he asked sympathetically. 

“Yes. We had the same room. Now I have 
it wTth Anton Pietszak. He is a sample boy 
at the blast furnace. But I don’t care for him 
much. He spends too much time at Lazich 
saloon. I go to night school twice a week. 
But he say too much trouble. Some day may¬ 
be”—the boy’s eyes brightened—“I be a ladle- 
man. ” 

Eric glanced at him with renewed interest. 
For the first time he realized that ambition 
is much the same all the globe over. Some¬ 
how he had always thought of emigrants as 
beings of another world, not to be judged by 
the same standards of life that he knew. 

During their conversation the two had been 
approaching the brown mountain of smoke 
of the steel plant. Eric followed the guide of 


GRAZING DEATH 


193 


his companion, received his instructions from 
the timekeeper as to how to register his number 
on the time clock, saw his name entered in a 
voluminous day book, and, smiling at Walter 
Stelmaszyk, fell in behind him as the young 
Hungarian led the way to the wash room of 
the open-hearth building, where the workmen 
left their coats and hats and dinner buckets. 

Dan Reynolds was already at his post before 
the bubbling caldron of No. 11. He greeted 
Eric with a bright nod, and motioned to Walter 
Stelmaszyk to take him in charge. Evidently 
the foreman was too occupied in his supervision 
of the furnace to pause. 

“Another ‘run’ is starting,” explained the 
young Hungarian as he surveyed rather rue¬ 
fully the condition of the ladles and prepared 
to initiate Eric into the mysteries of their 
cleaning. “The night shift finishes its ‘run’ 
before it leaves. And the ore is always bad 
when it first begins to cook. And the fire 
has to be fed all over again, too. It won’t be so 
bad after a bit,” he said encouragingly as a 
cloud of hot, biting gas from the simmering 
metal sent Eric back coughing violently. “It 
gets me at first, even now. Come over here to 


194 


CINDERS 


this side. That gas is not good to breathe. 
It has an evil spirit.” 

The “evil spirit,” although Eric did not 
know it at the time, was real enough. It 
was the insidious grip of lead, or mercurial, 
or arsenical poisoning — the dreaded roots of 
the so-called “occupational diseases” of our 
great industries. In its way, the menace of 
industrial poisoning in our factories is as great 
as the peril of dangerous machinery. And it 
is niore insidious, because it is often invisible, 
springing up where the uninitiated would never 
expect to find it. One would not associate 
danger, for instance, with the umbrella maker, 
or the linoleum manufacturer, or the felt 
worker; and yet the gas and acid fumes, over 
which the workmen are constantly bent, con¬ 
stitute a very grave danger of fatal infection. 
And this danger is even more pronounced in 
the steel mills, where the huge vats of bubbling 
metal hiss and boil like the devil’s own caldrons. 
Lead poisoning, mercury poisoning were the 
explanations of the grotesquely twisted limbs 
that Eric had noticed in the crowd of workmen 
on the occasion of his first application for a 
job. Or perhaps the poison fumes struck 


GRAZING DEATH 


195 


down their victim with that strange disease, 
the “ bends,” which creeps into the spinal 
muscles and doubles up the unfortunate work¬ 
man like a jack-knife. 

It did not need the friendly caution of his 
ladle mate to keep Eric from the hot fumes 
of the furnace. His first inhalation of the 
stifling gas cloud was effectual warning. For 
an hour afterward his lungs ached like those 
of a diver who has been too long under water, 
and his eyes stung like hot coals. The smoke, 
seeping to every crevice of the building, did 
not improve his condition. For a moment he 
was tempted to ask Dan Reynolds for per¬ 
mission to stagger to the door for a breath of 
fresh air—anything to escape from the torment 
of the smoke. And then he compressed his 
lips. He was paid to keep to his job. If the 
other workmen in the plant could withstand 
the fumes, he was expected to do the same. 
But that hour stood out in his memory like 
the span of a nightmare. 

Although he did not realize it, Dan Rey¬ 
nolds, in spite of the demands of the furnace, 
found time to watch him closely out of the 
corner of his eye. Once the foreman even 


196 


CINDERS 


stepped back to find an excuse to send his 
young helper into the yard. Even as the 
thought occurred to him, however, he aban¬ 
doned it with a grim shake of his head. He 
had been through the same ordeal himself, 
and knew that it is part of the training of every 
steel worker. If the boy was to make good — 
and Dan was already conscious of a curious 
interest in the lad — he must fight his battle 
for himself. It was not until he saw that 
Eric had overcome his first faintness and was 
beginning to bend to his task with a real in¬ 
terest that he motioned him over to his side. 

“Take this sample over to the laboratory. 
You will find it across the yard. Ask them to 
test it for silicon, and report.” 

The errand required only a few minutes, as 
the laboratory, a small square building, de¬ 
voted to the chemical tests of the plant, was 
only a short distance from the open-hearth 
mill. The escape from the heat and smoke of 
the furnace, brief as it was however, gave the 
boy a chance to fill his lungs again with the 
crisp morning air. Had he been given time to 
linger, Eric would have found much of interest 
in the laboratory, with its array of spattered 


GRAZING DEATH 


197 


tables, and test tubes, and retorts, and queer- 
colored gas flames. It was the first time he 
knew that a steel plant had such a feature as 
a laboratory. 

Later he came to realize that it was one of 
the busiest departments of the mills, and one 
of the most important. Making steel is a 
science whose success depends on its accuracy. 
Many of the orders of the steel mill read with 
the exactness of a druggist’s prescription. Here 
is a sample: 

“Send five thousand tons pig — 2 per cent 
carbon, less than 0.1 per cent phosphorus, 
2^2 P er cent silicon, and no sulphur.” 

And the marvel of the steel industry is that 
such an order is not filled in ounces or pounds, 
but in tons, and is not the product of human 
hands, but of machinery. 

Eric soon found that the mastery of his own 
task was not at all difficult. Had it not been 
for the heat and smoke it would have been 
comparatively simple. His love of outdoor 
sports, and the autumn days on the high- 
school football field, stood him in good stead, 
although the unaccustomed strain on his muscles 
was already beginning to make itself felt. When 


198 


CINDERS 


the noon whistles finally blew and Dan Rey¬ 
nolds led the way to the wash room and the 
dinner buckets, Eric received the interlude 
gratefully. It was not until he rose from the 
bench in the yard to return to the furnace that 
he realized that every nerve in his body was 
aching. He smiled ruefully as he rubbed his 
throbbing muscles. 

“Stiff?” laughed Dan. “You’ll soon be over 
that. It will pass off in two or three days.” 

Eric tried to laugh back. Two or three days! 
As a prophet of encouragement, Dan was 
scarcely a success. 

It was perhaps two hours later that a boyish 
voice, calling his name, reached Eric at the 
side of the furnace. As he rose from the ladle, 
over which he was bent, and stared through 
the smoky gloom of the building, he recognized 
Homer Fordham. The lad was accompanied 
by a young man who kept one hand on the arm 
of his young charge as though fearful that the 
floor might open without warning and swallow 
him. It was easy enough to divine that he 
was Master Fordham’s tutor, and it was also 
apparent that he was finding his present task 
not at all to his liking. 


GRAZING DEATH 


199 


“Hello!” called Homer. “Come over here, 
can’t you?” 

Eric glanced at Dan Reynolds; but the fore¬ 
man was evidently too engrossed in his study 
of the furnace to notice the incident. Some¬ 
what hesitatingly Eric obeyed. Homer held 
out his hand. 

“Better not,” said Eric laughing, looking 
down at his grease-caked palm. 

“Oh, bother the dirt! I wish I could be 
really dirty just once!” And Homer shook 
his hand heartily, while his tutor stared in 
horrified astonishment. “I say,” he continued, 
“I didn’t know you were going to work here. 
I thought you wanted a place in the office.” 

“No, indeed. There is only one way to learn 
to be a real steel man, and that is in the mills. ” 

Homer’s eyes sparkled, while his tutor sur¬ 
veyed Eric through his eyeglasses. It was 
quite evident that he didn’t fancy the example 
set his pupil. “ Don’t you think, Master Homer, 
that it is time we are going? I fear your father 
will begin to worry. ” 

“Do you like it in the mills?” the boy asked 
Eric as his tutor took off his glasses and polished 
them nervously. 


200 


CINDERS 


“As this is my first day, it is a little too 
early to say,” said Eric smiling. “Just now 
I am so stiff that I feel I would never get over 
it; but Dan Reynolds — he is the foreman over 
there — says that won’t bother me long. And 
then you have got to get used to the smoke 
and heat; but there wouldn’t be much steel 
made without them, I guess. Have you ever 
been here before?” 

“Once, but I am going to come down often 
now; that is, if father will let me. Burke 
thinks it is great. Don’t you?” he asked, 
turning to his tutor. The latter cleared his 
throat dubiously. 

“Of course, such visits occasionally have a 
certain practical advantage for you, no doubt.” 
He tightened his grasp on Homer’s arm. “ Really, 
Master Homer, I must insist that we take our 
departure. There is that Latin exercise to be 
finished, and after that —” 

“All right,” said Homer rather ungraciously. 
“But I’d like to know what good Latin is going 
to do me if I am ever to take the governor’s 
place here at the plant. When are you coming 
to see me again, Eric?” 

Eric flushed. “You can see I am going to be 


GRAZING DEATH 201 

pretty well occupied. I am afraid it will be 
hard to promise.” 

“Oh, all right, if you don’t want to come,” 
said Homer coldly. Eric smiled in spite of 
himself as the boy turned away. It was quite 
evident that Master Homer was a young gentle¬ 
man accustomed to having his own way. 

Eric was still smiling when he glanced up and 
saw Dan Reynolds surveying him curiously, 
and then he realized suddenly that, in spite of 
his seeming abstraction, the foreman had been 
watching the whole incident. 

Dan stepped over to his side. “You didn’t 
tell me that young Mr. Fordham was such a 
friend of yours. ” There was a new note in his 
voice, almost of suspicion. 

“I could hardly call him a particular friend,” 
Eric evaded, wondering at Dan’s tone. 

“And perhaps you know President Fordham, 
too?” 

Eric flushed. “And what if I do?” The next 
moment he regretted the words. Dan turned 
back to his work without replying, but there 
was a suggestion in his attitude that had never 
been there before. Eric stiffened his shoulders 
as he stepped over to his ladle. Why should 


202 


CINDERS 


the fact that he knew President Fordham cause 
such a change in Dan Reynolds? And why 
should he be subjected to such a sharp cate¬ 
chism on the subject? The foreman was act¬ 
ing as though he had come into the mills in 
an assumed character, which had suddenly 
been exposed. 

Eric was still pondering the situation wdien 
Dan rather sharply sent him over to the lab¬ 
oratory again with a sample of steel. Buried 
in his somber speculations, the lad discharged 
his errand and reentered the open-hearth 
building. He had covered perhaps half of the 
distance to furnace No. 11 when a sudden 
shout from behind him caught his ear. 

Mechanically the boy came to a halt as the 
shout was repeated. And then above him he 
was conscious of a hot, hissing cloud, and the 
smoky gloom was illumined with a burst of 
bright yellow sparks, like a score of skyrockets 
discharged all at once. Eric felt his feet riveted 
to the floor as the meaning of the situation 
came to him. 

From the roof loomed the mass of a hundred- 
ton electric crane, with its chains caught 
about a pot of burning slag. Something had 


GRAZING DEATH 


203 


gone wrong with the mechanism. The grip 
on the great pot had been broken, and it was 
tilting toward the floor in spite of the desperate 
efforts of the craneman to check it. And as 
it tilted, its burst of bright yellow sparks 
deepened to a dazzling red, like a great red 
sun, a sudden roar crashed through the building, 
and even as Eric realized that the slag pot, 
with its molten torrent, was directly over his 
head, he felt himself flung violently to the floor. 

But it was not the stream of suddenly es¬ 
caping slag that had caught him. In that 
instant a pair of arms had flung themselves 
around his shoulders, lifted him as though 
he had been a child, and literally tossed him half 
a dozen feet away. 

For a moment Eric lay where he had fallen. 
To his whirling senses it seemed as though 
the building were swaying around him, swaying 
in clouds of hot, dizzy gas. He tried to raise 
his hand to shield his eyes, and then the arms 
which had closed over him before picked him up 
again, and he knew that a man was stumbling 
with him to the door. 

His next coherent thought was of a cup of 
water forced to his lips, and he drank it fever- 


204 


CINDERS 


ishly, grateful for its cooling effect on his 
parched throat. The water helped to steady 
his whirling head, and he opened his eyes. 

Over him was bending a gray-haired man with 
a gaunt, strangely stern face, and the thin blue 
thread of a long-healed scar on his right temple, 
vanishing in his thick hair. He was regarding 
the lad through a pair of speculative gray eyes. 
It was “Silent” Battles. 

Eric struggled to his elbow. “I — I think 
I am all right now.” He paused, staring. 
Without a word, “Silent” Battles turned on 
his heel and walked off across the yard. 

The next moment he opened the door of the 
iron-shuttered brick building, where he la¬ 
bored at his secret task, and without looking 
back closed it after him. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
The Laird of Skibo 

J^RIC managed to reach his feet with less 
effort than might have been expected after 
the shock of his experience. With a few steps 
forward, however, he was glad to pause and 
hold to the side of the building. His left arm 
was badly bruised, and his head was still 
throbbing feverishly. From the door of the 
open-hearth mill the clouds of gas from the 
overturned slag pot still poured. As the boy 
glanced dubiously ahead, uncertain whether 
to venture farther, Dan Reynolds sprang 
through the doorway. 

At the sight of Eric’s white face he caught 
his arm and led him to a bench at the side of 
the building. In the tension of the recent acci¬ 
dent, the foreman’s sudden coldness had van¬ 
ished. He bent over the lad with rough sym¬ 
pathy and brought him another cup of water. 

“You have had a narrow escape, youngster! 


206 


CINDERS 


If you work forty years in the mills you will 
never have a closer call!” 

“Will you tell me what happened?” 

“There isn’t much to tell. There never is 
in a steel-mill accident. It is generally all over 
in less time than you can describe it. I guess 
the chains of the slag pot slipped. Maybe 
one of the Tugs’ tore loose. It is hard to tell 
exactly until an investigation is made.” 

“And — and was anybody hurt?” 

Dan hesitated. “A ladleman by the name of 
Fuerlant is missing. There are fifteen tons of 
slag on the floor, and they haven’t been able 
to reach him yet. Hot slag is hard to handle 
— when it is out of the pot. ” 

“And he is under that burning metal?” 
Eric glanced at Dan with a shudder. 

The foreman nodded. “He was probably 
killed instantly.” 

“And if it hadn’t been for ‘Silent’ Battles 
I N would be there with him!” Eric gasped. 
The world seemed suddenly to swim around 
his ears. He gripped the side of the bench in 
an effort to force back the weakness that was 
pressing upon him. 

“I guess that is about the size of it,” admitted 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


207 


Dan soberly. “But a miss of an inch is as good 
as a mile, you know,” he added with an attempt 
at cheerfulness. He turned back to the building. 
“I reckon you had better stay out here for a 
bit, youngster, until you get a hold on your¬ 
self. Or maybe I had better send you home?” 

“No, indeed!” Eric shook his head, with a 
swift vision of his mother’s alarm if she should 
hear of the accident and his narrow escape. 
He must keep the incident from her knowledge, 
if possible. “I think a few minutes in the 
fresh air will fix me all right.” 

The accident had occurred within less than 
an hour of the day’s closing time. When 
Eric recovered himself sufficiently to struggle 
to his feet again, the whistles were blowing. 
The blasts were followed by Dan Reynolds 
and Walter Stelmaszyk. 

“We’ll walk as far as your gate with you, 
youngster,” said Dan kindly. “And if you 
find you can’t make it, we’ll call a carriage.” 

Eric made it, however. In fact, the walk 
aided to clear his throbbing head. When he 
parted from his companions and entered the 
Raymond cottage, he was able to muster a smile 
that was almost cheerful. So successfully did 


208 


CINDERS 


he conceal his condition that when shortly 
after supper he tumbled into bed he had the 
satisfaction of feeling that his mother did not 
suspect how nearly a tragedy had grazed the 
household. 

Although Eric limped to the breakfast table 
the next morning, and his left arm was pain¬ 
fully swollen from its bruises, he was vastly 
better than he might have anticipated, and 
when he reached the mill was able to resume 
his work with a vigor which Dan said “was 
worth a dozen dead men.” The litter of the 
spilled slag had been cleared away overnight, 
and the broken “lug” of the pot, responsible 
for the accident, repaired. Except for a new 
face among the ladlemen, replacing the man 
who would never report for duty again, there 
was no indication of the recent tragedy. 

Eric was surprised to find, too, that there 
was no reference made to the incident by the 
workmen. The mill seemed to take it as a 
matter of course in the day’s work. 

In the noon hour Eric made his way across 
to the “House of Secrets” and hesitatingly 
knocked on its forbiddingly shuttered door. 
He was about to turn away when there was the 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


209 


sound of a heavy bar being removed from behind 
it, and it was opened a scant three or four inches. 
Through the aperture peered the stern face 
of “Silent” Battles. 

“I am sorry if I disturb you,” began Eric 
hurriedly, “but I want to thank you for what 
you did for me yesterday. You — you saved 
my life!” 

For a moment the face behind the door sur¬ 
veyed him in silence. Eric saw now that in 
spite of the stern cast of the features there 
was something compelling, almost fascinating, in 
the strangely silent man, a suggestion of rugged 
power. And with his closer view, he saw, too, 
that there was nothing repelling or morose in 
the face, but rather the shrinking reserve of a 
man who withdraws from the world through 
preference, and not bitterness. 

“You are the boy I assisted in the open- 
hearth mill yesterday?” asked “Silent” Battles, 
slowly and with a certain curious distinctness 
in each word. 

Eric nodded. “And I want you to know that 
I am very grateful for what you did for me!” 

He felt the gray eyes in the doorway regard¬ 
ing him gravely. He could almost fancy a 


210 


CINDERS 


suggestion of surprise in them, as though their 
owner was at a loss to understand why he 
should feel it necessary to thank him for the 
service. 

“I am sure, young man, that I was glad to 
be of assistance.” 

Eric stepped back awkwardly, and then the 
door was closed, and he heard the bar on the 
other side drop back into its place. His in¬ 
terview with “Silent” Battles was over! 

That evening, as Eric walked with Dan 
Reynolds from the mill, he decided suddenly 
to take the foreman into his confidence regarding 
the curious manner in which he had earned the 
favor of President Fordham. Dan listened 
with a silent astonishment that was prolonged 
until after he had finished the story. 

“I owe you an apology, youngster,” he said 
finally. 

“An apology?” repeated Eric, surprised in 
his turn. “What for?” 

“Do you mean to tell me you can’t guess?” 

“No, I can’t say that I can.” 

Something like a twinkle stole over Dan’s 
face. “Then I think I won’t explain for the 
present. But I am very glad that you have 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


211 


told me what you have. Why, it sounds 
just like one of those story-books from the 
library.” 

Eric finished his walk home, puzzling over 
Dan’s words. Why should the foreman be 
“glad” at the explanation he had given of 
President Fordham’s friendship? Why should 
Dan say that he owed him an apology? He was 
to receive an answer to his questions sooner, 
and in a more startling fashion, than he would 
have anticipated. 

A week passed. His first pay day at the 
mills came and went, and he had the satisfac¬ 
tion of carrying a little brown envelope marked 
44 Eric Raymond, ladle-sculler, $7.50” to his 
mother, and ordering her to close her eyes 
and open her hands as he dropped it onto the 
bed. 

He had not seen 46 Silent” Battles since the 
noon on which he had invaded the “House of 
Secrets.” The little iron-barred building might 
have been devoid of tenant had it not been for 
the smoke curling lazily up from its slender 
chimney. The week had accustomed Eric 
more easily to the smoke-darkened atmos¬ 
phere of the mills, and he was even growing 


212 


CINDERS 


used to the heat of the furnaces. The stiffness 
had gone entirely from his muscles, as Dan 
Reynolds had prophesied, and he had reduced 
the evening operation of scrubbing the day’s 
grime from his hands and face to almost a 
science. He had never realized before the lux¬ 
ury of warm water and soap. 

It was at the beginning of his second week 
that, as Eric was leaving the mill for his home¬ 
ward walk, a voice hailed him, and he turned 
to see Mr. Radcliff behind him. 

“Hello, there!” greeted the superintendent 
cheerily. “I guess I am going your way. 
Suppose you walk with me?” 

“Thank you!” said Eric, somewhat awk¬ 
wardly. Mr. Radcliff smiled as he fell into 
step beside him. 

“Well, how do you like sculling ladles?” 

“How did you like it?” asked Eric, and then 
flushed at his boldness. 

Mr. Radcliff laughed. “To be honest, I 
can’t say that I was overly enthusiastic with 
the job — but the hard job is sometimes a 
blessing in disguise. My three months of 
ladle-sculling, as I look back now, did a great 
deal for me. It taught me for one thing to 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


213 


submit to the drudgery of mechanical labor — 
it broke me into the harness, as it were.” 

“And then there is the fascination of the 
furnaces and machinery,” broke in Eric en¬ 
thusiastically. “Why, the mill is just like a call 
to battle!” 

“I see the steel microbe has found a lodg¬ 
ment in your blood,” smiled Mr. Radcliff. 
“I wonder if you know anything about the 
other side of steel — the business side,” he 
went on as he noticed the boy’s sparkling eyes. 

“You will find that the romance of the steel 
industry is not confined altogether to the 
furnaces and machinery. We call the history 
of steel the story of a thousand millionaires. 
This is almost literally true, and the amazing 
part of it is that most of these successful men 
know the day when they worked in overalls 
and carried dinner buckets. Take the story 
of Andrew Carnegie — 

“When he was fifteen years old, Andrew 
Carnegie’s first red-letter day dawned. He 
was working in an Allegheny bobbin mill —- 
a damp, cold cellar — so damp and cold that 
it seemed impossible for the hottest sun to 
reach it; and the spot that he called home was 


214 


CINDERS 


a dingy frame cottage in a back alley street. 
His red-letter day came when a friend of his 
father’s, who had emigrated from Dunfermline, 
Scotland, and learned the telegraph business, 
offered him a job as messenger boy in the 
Pittsburg Western Union office at three dollars 
a week. Three dollars a week! To young 
Andy it meant an advance of a dollar a week 
over the wages he was receiving in the bobbin 
mill. 

“The telegraph office has always been a 
great boy developer. The demands on the 
young messenger, often with a telegram of 
life or death to deliver, quicken his wits, spur 
his mental powers, teach him a self-reliance and 
an ability to think for himself far beyond his 
years. On the messenger bench in the Pitts¬ 
burg office were three other lads, in addition 
to Andrew Carnegie, who were destined to 
become famous. It is extremely doubtful, 
however, if the most sanguine observer would 
have picked among the freckle-faced, sharp- 
eyed youngsters, waiting for the next call from 
the desk, the future city attorney of Pittsburg, 
William C. Moreland, or the coming superin¬ 
tendent of the Alleghany Railroad, David 


THE LAIRD OF SKIRO 


215 


McCargo, or the embryonic manager of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, Robert Pitcairn. And 
it is certain that the observer would have passed 
the boy called Andy Carnegie without a 
suspicion that he was some day to be hailed 
as the world’s Steel King. 

“In the intervals of his messenger service 
Andy found himself attracted to the clicking 
telegraph instruments. Gradually he mastered 
the rudiments of the Morse code. One day, in 
the absence of the operator, a message came 
clicking frantically over the wire from Phila¬ 
delphia. A rule of the office forbade the boys 
from touching the instruments, but without 
a thought of the rule Andy jumped to the 
pounding receiver and wrote out the telegram. 
Now it is quite conceivable that his action 
might have ended in a prompt dismissal from 
the office. It happened, however, that there 
was a vacancy in the staff of operators, and 
Andy was promoted to the vacancy, at a 
salary of twenty-five dollars a month, instead 
of being discharged. 

“At the age of nineteen came his next chance, 
when he was given a post as operator in the 
offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad under 


216 


CINDERS 


Colonel Thomas A. Scott. It is a far cry from 
an obscure railroad telegrapher to steel multi¬ 
millionaire, and probably to no one would it 
have seemed farther than to young Andrew 
Carnegie. We must bear in mind that he was 
absolutely unknown, without influence, and 
with nothing at all to distinguish him from the 
dozen or other operators in the office. That is, 
nothing apparently. Let us see how his hidden 
qualities first came to the surface. 

“One morning that most dreaded dispatch 
of a railroad line, the announcement of a wreck, 
came flashing into the office. Colonel Scott 
was absent, and it was evident that without 
prompt action the road would be badly tied 
up. When young Carnegie found that Colonel 
Scott could not be reached, a daring inspiration 
came to him. Rapidly he wrote a dozen mes¬ 
sages to the officials in the neighborhood of the 
wreck, signed each ‘Thomas A. Scott/ and in 
a few hours had cleared the line and prevented 
a costly blockade. When Colonel Scott re¬ 
turned he sent for the young man who had 
used his name with such effect, and pro¬ 
moted him to the post of his private secre¬ 
tary. It was a post which gave Carnegie’s 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


217 


wonderful business instinct its first chance to 
show itself. 

“Of course, such a position brought the young 
secretary into intimate contact with the finan¬ 
cial world. 

“When he was twenty-eight, Carnegie was 
made superintendent of the Pennsylvania Rail¬ 
road, succeeding his old chief, Colonel Scott. 
About this time, too, he first embarked in 
the iron and steel business, buying with his 
savings a sixth interest in the Iron City Forge 
Company, which made a specialty of manu¬ 
facturing axles. Before long his interests de¬ 
manded so much of his time that he resigned 
his position with the Pennsylvania Railroad — 
a position which the average man would have 
thought a fit reward for a lifetime of effort. 

“It is a remarkable fact that although Car¬ 
negie grew to dominate the steel industry he 
was never a practical steel man. He knew 
little of the mechanical side of the business. 
His partners always supplied the technical 
knowledge. His work came in selling what 
they made, in finding the right market for 
their product, in creating a demand for it. 
Of the partners in the first Carnegie iron and 


218 


CINDERS 


steel enterprise, the forge company, none was 
over twenty-seven years of age. Henry Phipps, 
one of the group, had begun life as errand 
boy in a jeweler’s shop, and by studying 
evenings had worked his way up to book¬ 
keeper in a spike mill. When the company was 
in its infancy Phipps kept his job in the spike 
mill, and in the evenings walked three miles 
to the plant to post up the books for the day, 
and then trudged back home. There were no 
street cars; and if there had been it is doubt¬ 
ful if he could have afforded the ten cents for his 
fare. Those first years of Carnegie in the steel 
business were by no means rosy ones. This was 
just after the Civil War, when ready money was 
at an exorbitant interest, and the country was 
readjusting itself to new conditions. Often 
it was necessary to mortgage the iron ore, 
brought down from the Lakes, to raise money to 
pay off the workmen; and then the loan had 
to be liquidated before the furnaces could be 
supplied. 

“In the year 1872 Carnegie received a letter 
from his former employer, Colonel Scott, asking 
him to call at his office. The letter proved a 
turning point in the young ironmaker’s career. 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 


219 


“‘Can you sell six million dollars’ worth of 
bonds for the Pennsylvania Railroad?’ he was 
asked. 

“‘I can!’ was the confident reply. 

“ The Pennsylvania was building a branch 
road in Iowa, and it desired to sell the bonds 
in Europe for the necessary expenses. Carnegie 
packed the six million dollars’ worth of engraved 
paper in his valise, and took the first steamer. 
With such enthusiasm did he present the value 
of the bonds to the investors of London and 
Paris that within six weeks he had sold every 
dollar’s worth, earning for himself as commis¬ 
sions one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
The sudden windfall enabled the iron plant to 
round the last of its jagged financial corners. 
Just what would have happened to the enterprise 
had it not been for this stroke of fortune has 
always been something of a problem. 

“Up to this time the company had been 
producing only iron. The Kelly and Bessemer 
converters were still comparatively unknown 
propositions, and the making of steel was re¬ 
garded as too uncertain and hazardous a ven¬ 
ture for large financial returns. In fact, when 
Carnegie first heard of the new invention he 


no 


CINDERS 


advised against its adoption. 'Pioneering does 
not pay a new concern/ he said. 'Wait until 
the process develops!’ It was not until he 
stood before a Bessemer converter in full 
blast during a trip to England that its possi¬ 
bilities took hold of him. As he stood under 
its showers of orange and yellow sparks, the 
germ of the great steel corporation of the future 
seized him. He hurried home as fast as steam 
could take him. Henceforward there was noth¬ 
ing for him but steel. In the burst of his 
enthusiasm he reorganized his plant and threw 
every dollar he could gather into its develop¬ 
ment. In the course of ten years the Carnegie 
company was making one seventh of all of 
the Bessemer steel in America.” 

Mr. Radcliff broke off his narrative abruptly, 
with a hasty glance at his watch. During 
his story the two had walked a number of 
blocks beyond the point where Eric usually 
crossed off to the Raymond cottage. In his 
interest in the superintendent’s talk, however, 
he had never noticed the fact. 

"Why, I have been talking for nearly half 
an hour!” said Mr. Radcliff ruefully. "Why 
in the world didn’t you tell me to stop long ago?” 


THE LAIRD OF SKIBO 221 

“I was only afraid you would stop,” laughed 
Eric. 

44 Thank you! I am afraid I am too much of 
an enthusiast at times though. But I like to 
meet another enthusiast. You will find that 
unless you can eat steel, sleep steel, and breathe 
steel, you have made a mistake in your calling. 
Steel is a zealous mistress. Well, good night. 
If I have made you miss your supper, I will 
say I am sorry in advance.” 

And Mr. Radcliff waved his hand cheerily. 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
The Accident at the Blast Furnace 

the day following his walk with Mr. 
^ Radcliff, Dan Reynolds drew Eric over to 
a corner of the yard during the noon hour. 
There was a curiously awkward expression 
on the foreman’s face, even after the two were 
out of range of chance listeners. 

“I like you, youngster,” he began finally, 
almost with a jerk. “And I like the way you 
are buckling down to the job. I know it is hard 
for a boy raised like you to get used to the 
smoke and heat down here, and I wouldn’t 
have blamed you much if you had cried quits 
after that slag-pot affair; but you are fighting 
it out like a man.” 

“Thank you!” said Eric flushing, but gazing 
across at Dan sharply. From the other’s 
manner he felt there was more coming, and he 
was not mistaken. 

Dan knocked out his pipe impatiently, as 
though it was not drawing right. “So I hope. 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 223 


lad, that you’ll take what I am going to say 
now as coming from a friend. Some of the 
men are — are saying —” 

“What?” demanded Eric. 

“Well, you see, they don’t know what I do, 
and they saw young Master Fordham talking 
to you the other day, and last night one of the 
sample boys saw you walking with Mr. Radcliff, 
and — and they have got it into their heads 
that you have been put here for a purpose.” 

“A purpose?” repeated Eric blankly. 

Dan coughed dubiously. “I thought maybe 
you’d understand without my having to be 
plainer. You see, it is sometimes the custom 
in a big mill to take on a man who will keep 
the boss in touch with what is going on; that is, 
who will —” 

In a flash it was suddenly plain to Eric. He 
drew back with his eyes blazing. 

“You mean a spy, an informer! And that is 
what they suspect I am?” 

“There, youngster, don’t take it that way. 
I know better, of course, and I wouldn’t 
have said anything at all except —” 

“But you thought so, too, until I explained!” 
Eric persisted, 


224 


CINDERS 


Dan held out his hand. “I know. That is 
why I said I owed you an apology. I thought 
then you would understand.” 

Eric turned his face away. He was fighting 
desperately to keep back a queer moisture in 
his eyes. So this was what they thought of 
him — this was the impression because he had 
tried to fight his way on his own merits! Even 
Dan Reynolds admitted — 

“Won’t you shake hands, youngster?” 

For an instant, in the first surge of his bit¬ 
terness, Eric hesitated, and then he caught 
Dan’s hand. 

“I suppose it was only natural after all 
that —” 

“We’ll forget that part of it,” said Dan 
hurriedly. “I wanted you to know how things 
are so that — well, you would understand if any¬ 
thing is said to you. I thought maybe I 
could prepare you.” Dan stuffed his pipe back 
into his pocket as the whistles sounded. “ I want 
you to stick it out, youngster, and show the 
kind of stuff that is in you. And perhaps, 
after all it will blow over, and I have alarmed 
you for nothing.” 

But Dan’s attempt at cheer on that score was 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 2Z5 


rather forced. Even Eric could divine that 
the foreman would not have broached the sub¬ 
ject without serious fears. It is doubtful, 
however, if Dan anticipated how soon the need 
of his friendly warning was to be made apparent. 

The next day, as Eric was finishing his lunch 
with Walter Stelmaszyk, Dan having hurried 
back to the furnace without even waiting for 
the slice of apple pie in the bottom of his bucket, 
he was conscious that a group of workmen had 
paused near the bench. Even before he looked 
up he knew that they were discussing him. 

A young ladleman, whom he had heard called 
Scofield, was speaking. Not only was he mak¬ 
ing no effort to keep his voice lowered, but it 
was apparent that he was indifferent whether 
Eric heard him or not. 

“Yes, Jack got his ‘time’ last night. They 
told him they didn’t want men on the slag 
pots who took a nip during the noon hour. 
You ask me how it got out? I reckon if you 
want inside information on the subject you had 
better ask Dan Reynolds’ new ladle-sculler.” 

Eric lowered his glance to his dinner bucket, 
his face flaming. For a moment he was tempted 
to spring to his feet in hot denial. And then 


226 CINDERS 

his more sober second thought told him to 
wait. 

But Scofield was not finished. Emboldened 
by Eric’s apparently shrinking silence, he con¬ 
tinued with a sneer, “I thought we had finished 
with 4 spotters’ in the open-hearth mill, but 
I guess not. Why, this young fellow, Raymond, 
is so bold about it that he has the Fordham boy 
coming down to ‘call’ on him, and walks 
home with the boss himself, as though he was 
an old friend. And the poor chaps who work 
for an honest living have to stand for him 
prying around.’! 

It was too much. Dropping his dinner bucket, 
heedless where it rolled, Eric strode across to 
the group. He knew that hot tears were start¬ 
ing, and that a dry lump had come into his 
throat. He had no very clear thought about 
what he was going to do. He knew only that 
he had been publicly called a “spotter,” a 
spy, and that he could no longer keep silence. 

“My name is Eric Raymond,” he said, his 
voice quivering, as he paused before Scofield. 
“I suppose you meant me to hear what you 
said about me, but you are wrong, completely 
wrong!” 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE m 


“Oh, I am!” was the jeering answer. “I 
suppose then that Homer Fordham and Mr. 
Radcliff are old friends of your family, and that 
* you are working here just for the fun of the 
thing.” 

“No, they are not old friends,” said Eric, try¬ 
ing to keep his voice steady, “and I am working 
here because I have to make a living, and want 
to learn the steel business.” 

Scofield laughed unbelievingly. “Then they 
are taking such an interest in you on account 
of your handsome manners, I suppose, and you 
never heard of Jack White, or never men¬ 
tioned him to them? Give that story to a 
wooden Indian, Raymond. For a ‘spotter’ 
you tell a mighty weak yarn.” 

Scofield’s laugh ended suddenly. Eric’s 
restraint had been swept away. Heedless of 
consequences, the boy’s clenched hand swung 
forward and caught the other in the face. 
Choking under the blow, Scofield staggered 
back, while his companions stared in a sort of 
tongue-tied amazement at this new development. 

The ladleman recovered himself with a 
growl. As Walter Stelmaszyk sprang to Eric’s 
side, Scofield rushed at the boy furiously. In 


228 


CINDERS 


his flood of anger, Eric met the onslaught with 
a recklessness that would have surprised him 
under other circumstances. For a moment 
he parried Scofield’s lunges, and then a blow 
caught him under the chin which sent him 
reeling to the ground. 

“A fight! A fight!” As one of the younger 
and more enthusiastic of the spectators raised 
the cry, the group formed a rough circle around 
the couple. When Eric, with his head whirl¬ 
ing, scrambled to his feet, the crowd had 
been doubled. Recovered from the first daze 
of the boy’s blow, Scofield was grinning confi¬ 
dently. 

“Come on!” he sneered. “I can hit twice 
as hard when it is a ‘spotter’ I am punish¬ 
ing.” 

Eric pushed back his hair. He knew now 
that he had acted unwisely, that he had al¬ 
lowed his anger to run away with him, and that 
before a man of Scofield’s strength, whose 
muscles had been hardened by years in the 
mills, he stood absolutely no chance of hold¬ 
ing his own. But there was no retreat. 

He saw Scofield spring toward him, saw the 
ladleman’s right hand flash out with a force 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 229 


that would probably have knocked him un¬ 
conscious had the blow landed, and then, as 
he dodged under it, there was a shout from 
the edge of the circle, and Dan Reynolds 
forced himself through the crowd. With his 
sound eye gleaming, he planted himself be¬ 
tween the two combatants. It was not until 
long afterward that Eric knew that Walter 
Stelmaszyk had brought the foreman to the 
rescue. 

“What is the meaning of this, Ben Scofield?” 
demanded Dan. “I vouch for this youngster. 
Anything you have to say to him say to me! 
And if you want to fight, I reckon I can make 
the proposition a little more even!” 

Scofield fell back, flushing. 

“So you are ready to vouch for a ‘spotter/ 
are you, Dan Reynolds? I would never have 
thought —” 

“That is about enough talk of that kind!” 
interrupted Dan. “I happen to know that 
Raymond is no more a ‘spotter’ than you are, 
and if you want to argue the matter with me, 
I am ready. Most of you men have worked 
with me a good many years, and you ought 
to know that I would be the first to give 


230 CINDERS 

the spy the kind of medicine he ought to 
have.” 

“Then how do you explain about Jack 
White?” snapped Scofield. “We happen to 
know that Raymond had a long confab with the 
boss, and the very next day Jack got his walk¬ 
ing papers. What about it?” 

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Radcliff?” returned 
Dan. “I am not used to having my word 
questioned, Ben Scofield, and when I say the 
youngster is all right that ought to be enough. 
I am busy now. If the men want to appoint 
you the judge of who is to work here, you will 
have to see me about Raymond later. So long, 
mates!” 

Halfway to the door of the hearth mill 
Dan turned. “If you don’t mind putting in 
a few minutes extra, Raymond, I would like 
your help.” 

Eric followed the foreman gratefully. There 
was no effort made to detain him. Even 
Scofield seemed to stand in wholesome awe 
of Dan Reynolds’ influence. Eric could feel 
the young ladleman scowling after him, how¬ 
ever. There was no doubt that so far as he 
was concerned the truce was only temporary. 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 231 


“I wish I could tell you how much I appre¬ 
ciate your kindness!” began Eric to Dan, as 
they stepped back into the mill. 

“ Don’t try to,” returned the foreman rather 
gruffly. “It isn’t the first time that Ben 
Scofield and I have come together.” 

As Eric was putting on his coat in the wash 
room that evening, Dan returned to the sub¬ 
ject of his encounter with the ladleman for the 
first time during the afternoon. 

“I say, youngster, do you know anyone here 
at the mill who would try to make things un¬ 
pleasant for you?” 

Eric stared. “Why, outside of you and 
Walter Stelmaszyk, I don’t know anybody well 
enough to talk to!” 

Dan looked puzzled. For a moment he 
rumpled his hair thoughtfully. 

“The reason I asked is that I can’t understand 
that affair of this noon. Of course, I have 
heard one or two of the men wondering about 
you and the Fordham boy; and then when they 
heard how close you and the boss seemed to 
be there was some talk. But that wouldn’t 
be enough to make Ben Scofield go out of his 
way as he did. It looks to me as though he 


232 CINDERS 

had been put up to find an excuse for a fight 
with you.” 

“But why—” began Eric wonderingly. 

“That is just what I thought you might 
know,” said Dan dryly. “However, I don’t 
think he will bother you again for awhile. 
And in the meantime. I’ll do a little quiet 
detective work myself. But don’t let it worry 
you, boy. Remember I’ll stand by you, and 
I have been here long enough to have more 
influence than you might think.” 

Dan’s suspicions, however, did not appear 
to bear fruit. In fact, Eric found an increased 
note of friendliness in the greeting of the men 
as he met them going to and from the mill and 
during the lunch hour. Ben Scofield’s accusa¬ 
tion seemed to have been forgotten. Once Eric 
met the young ladleman, but the latter looked 
steadily in the opposite direction, evidently 
not anxious to renew hostilities. 

Had it not been for the disquieting com¬ 
ments which his meetings with Homer Fordham 
and Superintendent Radcliff had caused, Eric 
would have felt himself acclimated to his 
new environments. If proof had been needed 
of the sincerity of his enthusiasm in his work, 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 233 


the manner in which he had faced the dis¬ 
agreeable features of the plant would have 
supplied it. It would have required something 
more than a casual interest in machinery for 
a lad not used to mill life to meet the hot, 
smoke-laden atmosphere, and the clouds of 
grime which seeped into every pore of the 
body until it seemed that the most vigorous 
scrubbing could not remove them. It was not 
pleasant work, even apart from the heat and 
dust, bending for hours over the metal-caked 
ladles until every muscle cried out in protest; 
but there were three facts which held Eric to it. 

One was the new expression which came grad¬ 
ually into his mother’s face, the dawn of a new 
hope, the removal of the drawn anxiety, which 
told of her hours of worry over the problem 
of their future. Eric’s second fact of comfort 
was the remembrance of Mr. Radcliff’s story, 
and his remark, which came to him over and 
over again, “No, ladle-sculling isn’t pleasant. 
But it did a great deal for me. It taught me 
to submit to the drudgery of mechanical labor — 
it broke me into the harness, as it were.” Eric 
could understand now what kind of “harness” 
the superintendent meant — the harness of self- 


234 


CINDERS 


control, of routine habits of work. As the 
days wore on, he was conscious of a new poise, 
a new strength which he would have found it 
hard to define. It was the strength which comes 
from self-mastery. The third fact of help to 
him was the never-lessening fascination of the 
great machinery about him. To Eric each 
day brought a new marvel in the wonderland 
of steel. And the fascination was something 
more than that of a spectator. With it was 
the thought that even in his humble position he 
was bearing an active part in it all, that he was 
helping to make the finished product possible. 

It was this latter fact which made him linger 
at the mills often after his day’s work was 
done, and which took him on exploring trips to 
other buildings of the plant. In all of the pano¬ 
rama of machinery it was the blast furnaces 
which gripped his imagination the hardest. 
Once he aroused himself with a start from a 
survey of the man-made volcanoes, and realized 
that he had been watching them for an hour. 
His mother’s suspense when he reached home 
made him realize suddenly the construction 
she had placed on his tardiness, and he did not 
repeat the offence again until the memorable 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 235 


day of the windstorm and the double tragedy 
at furnace No. 9. 

Eric’s first day at the American plant had 
been marked also by the laying of the first 
brick in furnace No. 9. There were ambi¬ 
tious plans for this new addition to the blast 
furnaces. It was to tower above its neigh¬ 
bors at least twenty feet, and was to have 
an increased capacity above the others of 
double that many tons. As Eric watched it 
mount higher and higher, it seemed to him 
that the creation of brick and iron was fully 
conscious of its superiority and already was 
frowning down on the world in a realization 
of its importance. It takes much time and 
labor to build a blast furnace. Almost as 
much care enters into its construction as goes 
into the erection of a skyscraper — and with 
the various items of its equipment the cost is 
sometimes even higher. In the beginning of 
Eric’s third week at the mills, the new furnace 
had not progressed more than a score of'feet, 
and grave doubts were expressed as to the 
ability to complete it before winter made 
construction work impossible. 

It had come to be almost a daily habit of 


£36 


CINDERS 


the boy to pass the skeleton of the new furnace 
on his way to the gate, often in the company 
of either Dan Reynolds or Walter Stelmaszyk. 
On the day of the windstorm and its tragic 
sequel Eric was alone. The sky had been 
filling up with angry, dark gray clouds since 
noon. A cold, driving wind, rising almost to 
a gale, was sweeping in from the lake, and 
most of the men in the open-hearth mill had 
been glad to retreat from the yard and eat their 
lunches in the wash room. As Eric turned out 
of the building he found that the wind had 
perceptibly increased. For a moment he was 
tempted to take a short cut to the street, and 
abandon his visit to the blast furnaces. With 
a low laugh, he plunged into the gale. The 
wish to see “Old Baldy,” as he had dubbed 
the new furnace, was stronger than his desire 
to escape the storm. 

He had reached the corner of .the slag mill, 
the last building between the open-hearth plant 
and the blast furnaces, when a sudden dull 
rumble, like distant thunder, shook the earth. 
Eric quickened his steps to a run. There was 
something sinister, threatening in the sound. 
A burst of confused shouts was ringing out ahead 


ACCIDENT AT BLAST FURNACE 237 


of him, and as he rounded the slag mill a 
man running in the opposite direction car- 
romed into him. 

“Furnace No. 9 has gone over!” the man 
gasped. “ There are three or four men under 
it! The wind did it!” 


' CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

A Hazardous Rescue 

HPHE next minute Eric saw the disaster 
for himself. The brick walls that were to 
make the new blast furnace had been swept 
into a great jagged pile, from which a cloud of 
powdered mortar was swirling up into the 
gathering dusk like a billowy white cloud. 
The walls might have been leveled by the 
sweep of a giant sledgehammer. “Old Baldy” 
could not have been wrecked more completely. 

Men were running now toward the scene from 
all parts of the plant. As Eric reached the 
zone of the debris, Mr. Radcliff came dashing 
to the spot without either hat or coat. 

“Here, Jenkins!” the superintendent called, 
his eyes lighting on the foreman of the con¬ 
struction gang. “You needn’t tell me how it 
happened now. That can wait until later. Is 
anybody hurt?” 

“Williams and Oliver are under those bricks,” 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


239 


said the foreman crisply. “And somebody 
says another man was caught, too, who was 
watching the work.” 

“It was "Silent’ Battles, Mr. Radcliff,” 
supplemented a voice from the crowd. “I 
saw him just as the furnace went over.” 

Eric’s nerves leaped to a sudden tension. 
""Silent” Battles! The man who had snatched 
him from death buried somewhere under that 
jagged heap of wreckage, perhaps gasping with 
agony, maybe already dead! The confused 
shouts of alarm and frantic orders that had 
followed the accident had died away. The 
fast-increasing crowd watched the scene in 
silence. Even the rumble of the other furnaces 
seemed strangely subdued, as though the fact of 
the tragedy had penetrated to their devouring 
depths. A dozen acetylene torches had been 
lighted and thrust into the ground, and their 
yellow flames threw queer, wavering paths of 
light into the gloom. From the mass of debris 
came no sound. Were the men, crushed under 
its weight, still alive? Even had they escaped 
instant death their voices could not have been 
heard through the tons of brick and iron above 
them. 


CINDERS 


240 

Mr. Radcliff was not a man to waste time in 
such a situation. His success had been made 
largely through prompt action in just such emer¬ 
gencies. Even before the answer to his first 
question had been given he had leaped to the 
edge of the wreckage and was scanning its 
bulk critically. 

“We have got to dig down under this!” he 
jerked out. “And we have got to do it care¬ 
fully. If there is any life below, we may crush 
it out instead of saving it by hurrying unwisely. 
Jenkins, have that crane moved over here to 
the right! And now, for volunteers, men,” 
he said, raising his voice. “The crane can only 
operate from one end of this pile. We will 
have to work toward it by hand. Who is will¬ 
ing to help? The next half-hour may mean 
the saving of a life.” 

A dozen sprang toward the superintendent 
from the crowd. Eric was one of the first to 
respond. He did not know exactly what Mr. 
Radcliffs plan was, but he knew that “Silent” 
Battles was pinned somewhere under the shad¬ 
owy debris, and that here was a faint chance 
of helping him. 

To a person not familiar with the machinery 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


241 


of a steel mill, the removal of the ruins of the 
furnace would have seemed a task of days. 
The broken bricks and twisted iron made a 
heap perhaps twenty feet square and a dozen 
feet high. 

As the volunteers from the crowd gathered 
together, the electric crane, used for loading 
the flat cars of the blast furnaces, was swung 
slowly into position, and, burrowing its heavy 
tentacles into the debris, pivoted back with 
its first load. A faint cheer was started, but 
died away as Mr. Radcliff raised his hand. 

“I am taking a chance in using the crane. 
We must remember that its weight forces down 
the wreckage with each load it carries away. 
The real work of rescue we must do ourselves. 
Now, then, all together! And keep your ears 
strained for the slightest groan or cry that will 
guide us in the direction to take. ” 

It seemed a hopeless task. And then Eric 
caught Mr. RadclifTs eye, and the superin¬ 
tendent, recognizing him, nodded cheerily. 
There was a vigor, a determination in his at¬ 
titude which acted on those around him like 
a spur. John Radcliff, steel man, urging on 
the rescuers at the wrecked furnace, might have 


242 


CINDERS 


been a general leading his command to a last 
charge on the battlefield. 

Again and again the line of rescuers returned 
to the heap of debris, and staggered away, 
with their hands bruised and bleeding. With 
the system of a born executive, Mr. Rad- 
cliff soon increased the dozen of volunteers to 
eighteen, arranging the line so that there was 
no confusion or wasted energy. From the other 
side of the wreckage the crane continued its 
monotonous burrowing into the debris, swing¬ 
ing backward and forward with a lumbering, 
awkward motion, but reducing the jagged 
pile almost unbelievingly with each clutch of 
its tentacles. So far there had been no indica¬ 
tion of life under the mass. Except for the 
hoarse breathing of the line of rescuers, no human 
sound came from the slowly lowering heap. 

And then suddenly a low cry came from the 
man at the extreme edge of the wreckage, 
who was stepping back with his load. Dropping 
his bricks, he bent down for a moment, and then 
called excitedly to Mr. Radcliff. 

“There is a man down here! I can hear 
him calling! You can hear his voice yourself, 
sir, if you stoop low.” 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


243 


Mr. Radcliff straightened quickly. 

44 By Jove, you are right! Here, a half a 
dozen of you! Take hold at this end for a few 
minutes, and we’ll see if we can make him un¬ 
derstand that help is coming!” 

The cheer that now came Mr. Radcliff did not 
check. The superintendent himself joined it, 
and then taking his place in the line labored 
as enthusiastically as his subordinates. At 
the end of ten minutes he held up his hand 
for a pause, and stooped again over the debris. 

44 Can you hear me?” he called, with his hands 
to his mouth. 44 Rescue is on the way! Can 
you keep up until we get to you?” 

In the silence that followed his words, he 
dropped to his knees and bent his head until 
it was touching the bricks. At his shoulders 
the crowd leaned forward, scarcely breathing 
as it watched him. Mr. Radcliff raised his 
voice. 

44 It is ‘Silent’ Battles, men! He is under a 
beam, with his shoulder caught. But otherwise 
he isn’t hurt.” 

The superintendent crawled to his feet, and 
stood studying the wreckage with a frown. 

44 Hurry over half a dozen jacks, Jenkins, 


244 


CINDERS 


and some light timbers. I think I see a chance 
to reach Battles without waiting to dig down to 
him. ” 

“You mean a sort of a tunnel, sir?” 

“If we can do it! There is just a possibility. 
Now, men, let’s keep on as we were until Jen¬ 
kins gets back. It may be a matter of minutes 
at the end.” 

When Jenkins and a companion returned 
with the jacks and timbers, Mr. Radcliff put 
his plan into immediate action. Two of the 
jacks were screwed into position, and a couple 
of the timbers thrust over them and under 
the edge of the debris in such an angle as to 
give a good purchase. Six men on the other 
end of the planks bore down gently at first, 
and then more firmly as they saw that the 
jacks were secure. The mass of wreckage 
shifted slightly, but enough to show that 
the upward pressure was telling. And then an 
ominous crack sounded from one of the planks. 
The first cries of elation were checked. The 
timbers could not stand the tremendous strain. 

“We’ll try iron girders,” directed Mr. Rad¬ 
cliff, quick to grasp the situation. Cautiously 
the timbers were removed, for fear of increas- 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


245 


ing the weight of the wreckage on the im¬ 
prisoned men, and the girders substituted. 
Again the weight of six of the strongest men 
in the crowd was exerted. Even in the dusk 
it was easy to see that the muscles of their 
shoulders and arms were strained like whip¬ 
cord. But the leverage was having its effect. 

Three, four, six inches the wreckage was lifted. 
Mr. Radcliff called two more men to the girder. 
With this slight increase in the leverage the 
raise in the debris was even more perceptible. 

“Now, then, hold it!” cried the superin¬ 
tendent. Seizing another jack he crawled 
forward to the edge of the wreckage, and wormed 
himself under it until half of his body had 
disappeared. When he emerged it was to seize 
another jack and disappear again under the 
debris. As grimed and panting he crawled 
back to safety, a voice in the crowd sang out, 
“What’s the matter with Radcliff? Three 
cheers for Radcliff!” 

The superintendent flung up his hand. 

“This is no time for cheering, men. The 
hard work has just started.” 

As though his example had given a strange, 
new energy to the rescuers, the next effort 


246 


CINDERS 


raised the debris three inches farther, and the 
girders were shoved inward to the second pair 
of jacks. A passageway of more than four feet 
had now been cleared under the bricks. 

Mr. Radcliff flashed a torch into the space, 
and then straightened anxiously. 

“I am afraid I can’t make it again. It will 
need someone small and active to put up the 
next jacks. Who will volunteer?” 

Eric stepped forward. 

“I am ready, if you think I can do it.” 

Mr. Radcliff surveyed him for a moment 
in silence. 

“It wouldn’t be fair to hide the fact, my 
boy, that it is a hazardous attempt. Even the 
passage that we have opened may be blocked 
again at any minute, and we would be powerless 
to prevent it. If the wreckage should sink 
again, it would probably mean death to any¬ 
one caught under it.” 

“I am willing to take the risk,” said Eric 
quietly. 

Mr. Radcliff nodded gravely. “As you will. 
We will do the best we can for you, my lad. ” 

Eric kneeled down before the opening, hugged 
the jacks under his arms, and for an instant 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


247 


glanced up at the smoke billows of the blast 
furnaces, whipped like an angry sea by the 
wind, through which the stars shone cold 
and far away in a slate-gray sky. 

Only for an instant did he hesitate. And 
then, as the thin yellow light of Mr. Radcliff’s 
torch flashed over his shoulder, he drew a deep 
breath and crawled slowly through the opening 
before him. As his shoulders squeezed into the 
passage, the glow of the torch was practically 
shut off, and he knew that he would have to 
make any further progress in darkness. 

It was laborious work, and made still more 
difficult by the fact that he was obliged to hold 
his arms extended in order to keep the jacks 
before him. Several times he struck his head 
a sharp blow, and twice was forced to a com¬ 
plete halt,. It was much like a mole burrow¬ 
ing its tortuous course underground. And 
what if the debris above him should shift its 
position, or the jacks supporting the passage¬ 
way should become dislodged? A sudden cold 
tremor shook him as he pictured the tons of 
wreckage crashing down onto him, the awful 
suffocation, the fight for breath — 

His groping hands struck a solid surface ahead. 


248 


CINDERS 


He changed his position slightly, but the passage¬ 
way extended no farther. Cautiously he raised 
his jacks. Now would come the real test, the 
agony of indecision. Would the supports 
hold? His numbing fingers twisted the last 
screw into place, and scooped a little hollow 
in the ground to give the jacks a firmer foun¬ 
dation. 

“Mr. Battles!” he called hoarsely. “Mr. 
Battles! Can you tell by my voice how much 
farther in we’ll have to work to reach you?” 

He waited a moment. And then as slowly 
and steadily as though the speaker had been 
talking from an armchair came the answer, 
“I should say about two feet, certainly not 
over three feet.” 

“Good!” called Eric encouragingly. “Keep 
up your spirits! We are coming!” 

But were they coming? Even as the boy 
spoke the words, he realized how little there was 
to build them on. Indeed, would he ever 
reach the open air again himself? If his for¬ 
ward progress had been difficult, his back¬ 
ward course was doubly so. He knew that he 
was gashing his face and elbows cruelly, that 
his muscles were stretched into a constant 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


249 


torment, and that in the combined darkness 
and suffocation his head was whirling. And 
then came the horrifying thought that he had 
ceased to make progress, that he was cramped 
into a position from which he could not move — 

Something closed on his legs with a grip like 
a vise. He tried to throw it off, but he couldn’t 
and then he knew that it was a pair of hands, 
that he was being pulled from under the edge of 
the mound of death. 

“I knew you would make it, youngster!” 
cried a hearty voice in his ear. Mr. Radcliff’s 
arm flung itself over his shoulders, and as he 
drew in deep breaths of the invigorating night 
air he saw the group at the jacks sway forward 
again, once, twice, and knew that the weight 
of the debris had been raised again. 

The superintendent dropped to his knees, 
and flashed his torch once more under the 
wreckage. He rose to his feet, and without a 
word took Eric’s arm, and stared down into 
his face. When he spoke again, his voice was 
quivering. 

“Do you think you can do it again, my boy?” 
he asked in a tone so low that the lad scarcely 
heard him. 


250 


CINDERS 


Eric tried to smile back. 

‘Til do my best, sir.” 

“If you can reach Battles with another 
jack, I think you can get his hands, and we’ll 
try a sort of living-chain affair to get him out. 
I would go myself if there was any chance at 
all that I could squeeze through. As it is —” 

Eric felt Mr. Radcliff press into his hand an 
electric search-lamp, that had been brought 
from his office, took the extended jack held 
out to him, stooped a second time into the 
rough passage, and saw a thin needle of light 
go dancing ahead of him as he pushed the button 
of the search-lamp. In through the darkness it 
cut like a golden pencil stroke, against the 
jagged bricks, the half-buried jacks, forced 
into the earth by the terrific strain above them, 
and finally at the end of the hazardous tunnel it 
struck the face of a man, stretched flat on his 
breast, and traced out his features one by 
one, as an artist paints a picture on a blank 
canvas. It was the gaunt face of “Silent” 
Battles. Afterward Eric knew that he was 
suffering torture such as comes to few men, 
but there was no hint of it in his face, nothing 
but a grave, self-contained confidence. He 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


251 


was looking death in the eyes with the quiet, 
impersonal curiosity with which a surgeon 
might have surveyed an interesting case on 
the operating table. 

And there was that in the face which drew 
Eric’s dragging limbs like a strange, powerful 
magnet, which kept him to his task foot by 
foot, and at the last inch by inch, until he 
stretched out his jack, jerked it into place, and 
felt the hand beyond close over his. For just 
an instant he felt it tremble with the shock 
which came from the sudden release of the 
weight on the crushed shoulder, and then it 
steadied in a firm clasp, which was not broken 
again. 

A confused murmur was ringing in his ears, 
like the surge of rushing water. He knew that 
presently it would sv T eep over him, and buffet 
him down and down until — 

“They are cheering, my lad! Don’t you hear 
them?” 

The even tones of “Silent” Battles bore down 
through the darkness and ignited some last 
forgotten spark of vitality. Of a sudden he 
knew that the surge, like rushing water in his 
ears, was the encouraging shouts of the men at 


25£ 


CINDERS 


the other end of the passage, and that the 
hands which had dragged him to safety before 
had him fast again. 

And now a great gulf of the blessed air beat 
through into his grimed face; he felt himself 
being lifted upward and outward, saw the 
racked form of “Silent” Battles pulled to the 
open with him, and was conscious of a circle 
of wildly enthusiastic men surrounding him, 
and thumping him on the shoulders, and cry¬ 
ing all manner of foolish things which he could 
not understand. 

He knew that one was Dan Reynolds, and 
then, as the mist cleared somewhat, that Walter 
Stelmaszyk was laughing and crying alternately 
at his shoulders. 

It was the latter who aroused him. 

“Why, you look as though you had been 
buried in a cinder pit for a month! If your 
name wasn’t Eric Raymond, it might be 
‘Cinders’!” 

Eric laughed back weakly, hysterically. And 
then quite suddenly his laugh died away. 
Surely his brain, weakened by his ordeal, had 
played him a trick. There on the edge of the 
crowd, etched vividly for a moment in the torch- 


A HAZARDOUS RESCUE 


253 


light, was a white, staring face, with a pair of 
black, shifting eyes, and thin, tightly pressed 
lips. It was the face of the balked thief who 
had tried to steal the blast-furnace plans, the 
face of the man whom Detective Rogers had 
called “Walker” on that memorable night at 
“The Oaks.” 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
Mrs. Raymond has Another Shock 

"VTOT until midnight was the wreckage of the 
demolished furnace cleared sufficiently to 
reach the other two men caught by the torrent 
of debris. And then it was found that, even 
had it been possible for rescue to reach them 
within an hour after the accident, it would 
have probably come too late. Both had evi¬ 
dently been killed almost at once. This fact 
made the escape of “Silent” Battles all the 
more astonishing. The beam that crushed 
his shoulder and held him prisoner had saved 
his life. Had it not been for the protection 
that it afforded, undoubtedly he would have 
shared the same fate as the others. 

When Eric reached the mills the next morn¬ 
ing the wreckage was being loaded onto flat 
cars, and it was announced that, in view of the 
lateness of the season, the rebuilding of the new 
furnace would be suspended until the next 


ANOTHER SHOCK 


255 


spring. The first person that Eric met was 
Walter Stelmaszyk. 

“Good morning, 4 Cinders’!” said the young 
Hungarian, grinning. For a moment Eric 
stared at him, not understanding; and then he 
remembered the incident of the previous even¬ 
ing. 

44 1 — I was only — what you call joking,” 
stammered Walter, fearing he had given offense. 
44 1 won’t call you that if you would rather not.” 

44 Oh, I don’t mind,” said Eric laughing, tak¬ 
ing the other’s arm. To his surprise he was 
given the name by several others during the 
day. Mill men, like circus men, have a vocabu¬ 
lary peculiarly their own, and are quick to 
seize on the slightest excuse for a nickname. 
Although Eric did not realize it, the sobriquet 
of 44 Cinders” meant that the men of the plant 
had accepted him as one of themselves, that 
they were satisfied he had passed the test. They 
do not bother to rechristen an 44 outsider.” 

44 Silent” Battles was still under a physician’s 
care. The examination of his shoulder had 
revealed a broken collar bone and a mass of 
ugly bruises. Under ordinary circumstances 
it would be ten days or two weeks before he 


256 


CINDERS 


could expect to resume his work. It was not 
until Eric asked for his address, with the idea of 
calling on him that evening, that he found how 
much aloof the silent worker of the “House 
of Secrets” had been living. No one among 
the men was able to tell him where he re¬ 
sided. In fact, no one appeared to have been 
on intimate terms with him at all. He was as 
complete a mystery as the task on which he 
labored behind the barred doors of the ex¬ 
periment station. 

“I reckon you’ll have to inquire at the 
office,” said Dan during the noon hour. “They 
will have his address on the employes’ records, 
or maybe Mr. Radcliff can give it to you.” 

He broke off, frowning. Ben Scofield had 
shuffled rather awkwardly toward them, and 
when he caught Dan’s eye stood flushing 
uncertainly. 

“I have come to try to square myself, Ray¬ 
mond, if I can. I see now what a mistake 
I made, and I want to know if you can forget 
it and shake hands.” 

A glance at the young ladleman’s burning 
face was enough to show what an effort the 
words cost him. 


ANOTHER SHOCK 257 

“Forget it?” cried Eric heartily. “Of course 
I can! And I am mighty glad to do it!” 

Scofield shifted his feet. 

“There is something else I ought to tell you, 
too. Do you know a man named Walters, 
over in the slab mill?” 

“Walters?” Eric shook his head. “No, 
I don’t believe I do. Why?” 

Scofield glanced over his shoulder, and lowered 
his voice. 

“It was Walters who first started the story 
of your being a ‘spotter,’ and who tipped me 
off that it was you who got Jack White his 
walking papers. And I happen to know that 
he has been trying to put the men up against 
you since then.” 

Dan Reynolds looked up with sudden ex¬ 
citement. 

“There, youngster, what did I tell you? 
Didn’t I say that there was underhanded 
work going on somewhere?” 

“But I don’t understand. I can’t see why — 
Can you describe Walters for me?” Eric 
broke off. A sudden idea had come to him 
as he recalled, almost for the first time during 
the day, his fleeting view of Walters in the dusk 


258 


CINDERS 


the night before. Could it be that Walters 
had come back to the mill and secured employ¬ 
ment under the name of Walters? 

“Let me see,” said Scofield, frowning. “I 
guess maybe Walters is three or four years 
older than I am, dark, and rather slender. 
He doesn’t look as though he has been used 
to much hard work, but he must know ma¬ 
chinery to hold his job.” 

Eric’s eyes glistened. The description fitted 
Walters exactly. 

“How long have you known him?” he asked. 

“Only two or three weeks. He is a new man 
here — came to work only two or three days 
after you did.” 

“I say,” interrupted Dan, “I don’t know 
what is on your mind, youngster, but if you 
have an idea that you know this fellow, why 
don’t you go over to the slab mill and take a 
look at him? That is the easiest way to settle 
the matter.” 

“It would be — if you could find him,” 
grinned Scofield. “But he’s gone. He asked 
for his ‘time’ this morning.” 

Eric stared. If the man was really Walters, 
could it be that he had left suddenly because 


ANOTHER SHOCK 


259 


he knew that he had been recognized, and 
feared exposure? 

“There goes the whistles!” said Scofield, 
moving away. “I’ll see you later. If I run 
across Walters I’ll let you know.” 

“Suppose you tell me what it is all about,” 
suggested Dan as Eric gazed after the ladle- 
man’s retreating figure. 

The foreman whistled when the lad told 
him of his recognition of Walters the night before, 
and the idea that Ben Scofield had suggested. 

“I shouldn’t wonder if you are right,” he 
commented. “That accounts for a good many 
things. Walters saw his chance to add to those 
stories of a ‘spotter,’ and worked on the men 
in the hope that you would be frightened off 
and quit before you ran into him again.” 

“But why should he come back?” asked Eric, 
“knowing the chance he was taking.” 

Dan scowled. 

“ He must have had a strong reason. Maybe 
he came back to finish the job that you inter¬ 
rupted.” 

“You don’t mean that he would try again 
for the plans that he stole?” 

“There may be others that would answer 


260 


CINDERS 


the same purpose,” said Dan gravely. “I 
told you before, didn’t I, that there are persons 
who would pay a handsome sum to know what 
is going on in the American Steel Company’s 
experiment station. And Walters wouldn’t be 
taking such a chance in coming back as you 
might think. He has always worked in the 
office, and probably none of the men in the 
mills had ever seen him before, or, if they had, 
they wouldn’t know anything of the other 
affair. And, besides, the last thing that anyone 
would expect him to do would be to return to 
the plant under the circumstances. If I were 
you I would take the whole story to Mr. Rad- 
cliff after work to-night. If there is anything 
on foot he ought to know about it without 
delay.” 

“I’ll take your advice,” said Eric. “I will 
stop and tell him on my way home.” 

When he inquired at the executive offices, 
however, he was informed that Mr. Radcliff 
had left that morning for St. Louis and would 
not be back for two days. Later in the even¬ 
ing the suggestion of communicating with 
Mr. Rogers occurred to him, but when he tele¬ 
phoned to the plant he was told that the de- 


ANOTHER SHOCK 


261 


tective was also out of town. The fact, however, 
that Benson, if indeed the vanishing Walters 
was the same person, had left the mills quieted 
his uneasiness, and he felt that under the cir¬ 
cumstances forty-eight hours’ delay, until the 
superintendent’s return, would not affect the 
situation. 

Purchasing an evening newspaper at the 
corner drug store, where he had telephoned, 
he walked home, determined to dismiss the 
matter for the present. Mrs. Raymond was 
awaiting him, propped back in an easy-chair 
in the sitting room. She had made such rapid 
progress toward recovery in the past two weeks 
that for several days she had been allowed to 
sit up for brief periods, and had chosen these 
periods in the evening, while Eric was at home. 

“Here is a report of the blast-furnace acci¬ 
dent,” he said, drawing a chair up near her. 
“Shall I read it to you?” He had previously 
seen that there was no mention of his name in 
the account. Indeed, his mother was still un¬ 
aware of the active part he had played in the 
affair. Finishing the article, Eric laid the 
paper on the table and stepped into his mother’s 
room for her medicine. 


CINDERS 


£62 

A low gasp from her checked him in the door¬ 
way. She had fallen back in her chair, with the 
same expression of tense, white anguish on 
her face that he had seen on the day when she 
had been first seized with her sudden illness. As 
he sprang to her side, he saw that she was 
holding the newspaper he had dropped, and 
was staring at its front page. 

“ Mumsy! ” he cried despairingly. <c Mumsy! ” 

A dozen wild thoughts were racing through 
his mind, but he tried to put them from him 
until he could return with the physician. 
Was his mother’s prostration due to another 
shock? And if so, what had caused it? Could 
it be that anything in the newspaper was re¬ 
sponsible? Eric shook his head helplessly. 

Since those first days of Mrs. Raymond’s 
illness, he had not referred again to the curious 
letter that had produced such a disastrous 
effect on her. Indeed, with the new interests 
that had come into his life, and the conscious¬ 
ness that his mother was slowly regaining her 
former health and spirits, he had endeavored 
to forget the incident. His mother had promised 
him an explanation some day, and until then he 
had been endeavoring to school himself to wait 


ANOTHER SHOCK 


263 


patiently. Did this new development mean 
that the enigma of the letter, with all of its 
bewildering questions, was to come into the 
life of the household again? 

Mrs. Raymond had recovered so far that 
when Eric and the doctor reached the cottage 
she was able to be carried back to her room. 
A half an hour later the boy had the satisfac¬ 
tion of knowing that the physician’s soothing 
draught had taken effect, and that she was 
sleeping. 

The doctor shook his head dubiously, however. 

“It is absolutely necessary for Mrs. Ray¬ 
mond to avoid excitement of any kind,” he 
said gravely. “Unless she can be assured ab¬ 
solute quiet, I can’t answer for the conse¬ 
quences. ” 

Excitement? What possible cause of excite¬ 
ment had his mother been given that evening? 
Eric picked up the evening newspaper as the 
physician took his departure, and settled him¬ 
self at the sitting-room table, determined to 
read, if necessary to answer the question, every 
word of the page on which Mrs. Raymond’s 
eyes had been fastened. With the exception 
of the article relating to the blast-furnace acci- 


264 


CINDERS 


dent, however, he could find nothing even re¬ 
motely suggesting an interest for her, and he 
knew there had been nothing in the article 
in question to cause her apprehension. 

He was returning the paper to the table in 
bewilderment when he held it for a moment 
to look at two illustrations accompanying the 
accident report. One was a picture of the new 
furnace, in course of construction, taken the 
week before, and the other was a snapshot of 
the company’s experiment station, before which 
stood “Silent” Battles. Evidently an enter¬ 
prising photographer had taken the occupant of 
the “House of Secrets” unawares, for Eric could 
well believe that “Silent” Battles would have 
objected strenuously had he been given warn¬ 
ing in advance. As it happened, the picture 
proved a timely feature, as presenting the only 
survivor of the catastrophe at the furnace. It 
was an unusually clear photograph, presenting 
its subject’s gaunt, rugged face with an ex¬ 
traordinary distinctness, and Eric determined 
to cut it out and preserve it. 

The next morning, however, the paper was 
gone from the table, and when he kissed his 
mother good-by he saw it lying on her bed, still 


ANOTHER SHOCK 


265 


open at the front page. For a moment he was 
tempted to pick it up in the hope that she 
would explain her interest in it, and then he 
repressed the impulse with a sigh. When he 
glanced back he saw Mrs. Raymond’s eyes 
following him wistfully. There was something 
strangely like pleading in their depths. 

Eric’s lips compressed, and he omitted his 
usual cheery whistle as he swung out of the gate. 
What was the secret that persisted in crossing 
their lives so suddenly and unexpectedly? 
Would it ever be explained? 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
Homer Fordham Rebels 

AS Eric was entering the mills the next 

* morning, a carriage drew up at the gate, 
and the driver, springing to the ground, gave his 
hand to a man in the rear seat, whose left arm 
was bound up in a heavy sling. It was “ Silent ” 
Battles, with the pallor of his gaunt face bear¬ 
ing added testimony to the experience through 
which he had passed. 

Eric sprang forward with a quick cry of 
greeting. 

“Why, I thought you would be in bed for 
two weeks!” 

A smile flickered across “Silent” Battles’ 
face. 

“That is what the doctor ordered, but 
unfortunately I am not able to obey him. 
However, I shall have to keep from active 
work for awhile, I am afraid. I am more 
crippled than I look.” He fixed his eyes sud¬ 
denly on the boy. “Do not think me ungrate- 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 267 


ful, young man, if I am not profuse with my 
thanks. I appreciate the service you rendered 
me perhaps more than you can understand. 
I hope it will be possible some day to show my 
appreciation more substantially than bywords.” 

“1 was only trying to even up the debt I 
owe you,” said Eric, flushing. 

“Then I am afraid there are a great many 
people who are not so scrupulous about pay¬ 
ing their debts. ” Again the brief smile flickered 
across the gaunt face. “By the way, it occurs 
to me that you have not yet given me your 
name. I fancy I heard it vaguely the other 
night, but I was scarcely in a condition to re¬ 
member it.” < 

Eric stared as he realized that the man to 
whom he owed his life had counted the service 
as too slight even to trouble to identify him. 

“Raymond,” he answered; “Eric Raymond. 
I was going to call on you last night to inquire 
how —” 

He did not finish the sentence. “Silent” 
Battles, already stepping toward the gate, 
stopped so abruptly that Eric fancied he had 
jarred his injured shoulder. The boy saw the 
fingers of his right hand clinched tightly to- 


268 


CINDERS 


gether, as if to fight back a spasm of pain. 
For a moment he gazed at the lad, his eyes star¬ 
ing, his face twitching. Then he passed his 
hand wearily across his forehead. 

“I am afraid I have overrated my strength, 
and that I have undertaken a bit too much.” 
He turned back to the carriage, which was still 
waiting. “ Driver, I will have to ask you to 
help me in again, and take me back home. I’ll 
have to let my work go for another day.” 

It was apparent that he was controlling him¬ 
self only by a desperate effort. When he was 
assisted to the seat, his head sank down onto 
his breast as though he had been overcome 
by the exertion he had made. It was not 
until the carriage was in motion that Eric re¬ 
membered that he had neglected to ask his 
address. 

He aroused himself with an effort. Now 
that he reviewed the incident clearly, the sus¬ 
picion forced itself upon him that there was 
something more than physical pain in the col¬ 
lapse of “Silent” Battles. And he realized, 
too, that there had been no chance of a jar 
of the broken collar bone, as he had at first 
surmised. 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 269 


He continued on into the mills in a daze. 
His life of late seemed to be composed of a suc¬ 
cession of mysteries. It was as though he 
was living in an atmosphere of strange, unex¬ 
plained things. What reason could be ad¬ 
vanced for “Silent” Battles’ curious emotion? 
Their conversation surely had been matter-of- 
fact enough. He tried to review it word by 
word, and then gave up the effort with a frown. 
With distinct relief he heard Dan Reynolds 
calling to him, and turned to the day’s work. 

That evening Eric met a real surprise. He 
had drawn his chair up to the sitting-room 
table, after the supper dishes had been cleared 
away, with a copy of “ Quentin Durward,” 
which Tom Noraker had brought from the 
library for him, when a low knock sounded 
at the door. As he opened it, he gave an ex¬ 
clamation of astonishment. Homer Fordham 
stood outside, smiling at him uncertainly. 

“May I come in?” he asked, as though 
not quite sure of his reception. 

“Of course!” said Eric heartily, recovering 
himself. “How did you know where I lived?” 

“Oh, I asked Mr. Rogers.” The boy glanced 
around the sitting room, at the cozy stand, 


270 CINDERS 

the reading lamp, and the rocker drawn up 
under it. 

The taste which had guided Mrs. Raymond 
in the furnishing of the little home could not 
be mistaken. 

“You certainly look mighty comfortable,” 
he said. “I suppose I ought to have waited 
to ask you whether I could come over or not, 
since you didn’t accept my invitation; but—” 

“I am glad to have you,” assured Eric, 
gradually losing his sense of awkwardness. 
After all, he was not ashamed of his home, even 
if a frayed rag carpet did cover the floor. 
“I would like to have you meet my mother, 
but she is ill just now.” 

“Perhaps then I had better go?” 

“No, indeed! She is asleep, and we won’t 
disturb her out here in the least.” 

“I am glad to hear that.” Homer flushed. 
“To tell the truth, I came over for — for a 
certain purpose. I want your advice.” 

“My advice?” Eric laughed. 

“Oh, it isn’t funny a bit, to me. And I 
came to you because I thought you would 
understand how I feel. I have decided to 
rebel. ” 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 271 


Eric stared in genuine bewilderment. 

Homer drew his chair up a little closer, and 
lowered his voice. 

“I told you, didn’t I, that I have been going 
to school in England? Mother always wanted 
me to go to Rugby, and then to Oxford. She was 
an English lady, you know. And father has 
planned to send me back again next month. 
He thinks he has it all settled, but he hasn’t. 
I have made up my mind that I am not going. ” 

“But what are you intending to do?” 

As Homer leaned forward in his chair he 
looked very flushed and determined. 

“No,” he said again, “I don’t want them to 
send me back! And that is final!” 

“But what are you going to do about it?” 
repeated Eric dubiously. 

“I don’t know. That’s the trouble. I 
thought maybe you could give me a suggestion. 
If I were only three or four years older, I would 
get a job in the mills, and go to work.” 

Eric smiled as he tried to picture the ex¬ 
pression of Homer’s tutor should that dignified 
individual chance to overhear such a horrifying 
statement. 

“I don’t care! I mean it! Dad wants me 


272 


CINDERS 


to be a steel man some day, and talks about 
how I am to take his place, and all; and then he 
wants to pack me off to Rugby, where they 
have no more idea of the steel business than — 
than they do of baseball. All they play over 
there is cricket.” 

“But if your father wants you to go — M 
suggested Eric. 

“That’s just it! Deep down in his heart 
he doesn’t, and I know it! It is Burke who 
is talking him into it.” 

“Why don’t you ask Mr. Radcliff to help 
you?” 

“Say, that is a bully idea! But do you 
think he would do it? Oh, if I could only 
do something big like you have done, something 
to show Dad that I am growing up, and am 
learning to think for myself!” 

Homer took his cap, and rose reluctantly. 

“Wait a minute,” said Eric, “and I’ll walk 
a few blocks back with you.” 

Before the two reached the door, however, 
there came a second knock, and Eric opened 
it to admit Dan Reynolds. At sight of Homer 
Fordham, the foreman drew back, apolo¬ 
getically. 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 273 


“I didn’t know you had a visitor, youngster. 
I’ll come back some other time.” 

Eric took his arm and pulled him into the 
room. 

“ What do you say, Homer, to hearing a little 
lecture on steel by one of the veterans in the 
business?” 

“Great!” cried Homer enthusiastically. 

“This is Homer Fordham, Mr. Reynolds,” 
continued Eric, smiling at Dan’s embarrassment 
before the president’s son. “And I think you 
will find him as good a listener to your stories 
as I am. Suppose you tell us where the supply 
of iron ore comes from, and how and when it 
was discovered? Take this armchair.” 

“But — oh, I say,” protested Dan. 

It was Homer Fordham who turned the scale. 

“Please do, Mr. Reynolds!” 

“All right then,” said Dan resignedly. “So 
it is the ore you want to hear about this time, 
youngster? You have given me a pretty big con¬ 
tract. The story of iron ore is one of the most 
important chapters in the history of American 
mines. 

“ The ‘ Columbus ’ of the great Superior ore 
region was Philo M. Everett, a Michigan 


274 


CINDERS 


prospector. In the spring of 1845, two wander¬ 
ing Indians offered to guide him to a ‘moun¬ 
tain of solid iron.’ With' four men and the 
roving natives Everett traveled to Lake 
Superior, bought a small sailing skiff, and 
coasted westward on what was to prove the 
most productive, although one of the least- 
known, mining expeditions in American history. 

“ For days the party wrestled with the waves, 
drenched to the skin. It was not until after six 
weeks of travel by land and water that the 
Indians pointed to a distant black hill, and 
said, ‘Iron mountain! Indian not go near! 
White men go! ’ A native legend inhabited the 
‘iron mountain’ with wilderness demons, cast¬ 
ing an evil spell on all who approached, which 
was perhaps one reason why the redskins 
were so ready to divulge its location. 

“The white men found a rugged hill, one 
hundred and fifty feet high, of solid ore. They 
were destined to make more money from their 
discovery than most of the prospectors who went 
that year to California for gold. In the year 
1891 more than twice as many millions were 
paid for the iron of Superior as for all the gold 
that had been mined in California. From 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 275 


three Minnesota ranges alone, since those days 
of ‘forty-nine/ when Peter Everett first ex¬ 
plored them with his Indian guides, seven hun¬ 
dred million dollars’ worth of ore have been 
taken. 

“ One romantic story follows another in the 
history of the Minnesota ore mines. One of the 
most remarkable is the story of Charlemagne 
Tower and the Vermilion range on the.north¬ 
ern side of Lake Superior. There is a certain 
compound of iron ore and sulphur which the 
mining experts call ‘fool’s gold.’ Wandering 
prospectors, roaming through the woods of 
northern Minnesota, circulated tales of won¬ 
derful gold discoveries, and even showed bits 
of the metal they had found to support their 
stories. One day, George Stuntz, a surveyor, 
determined to investigate the rumors. He 
returned from the Vermilion range with the 
statement, ‘ There is no gold there, but some¬ 
thing that may be as precious as gold — iron!’ 
The ore was tested and found of such a high 
grade that at once a rush was made to stake 
out the first claims on the new El Dorado. 
One hundred thousand dollars was spent by the 
eager prospectors, and then it was found that 


276 


CINDERS 


the ore supply was so inaccessible, and the 
difficulties of transporting it to the coast 
so great, that the idea of mining it was aban¬ 
doned. For ten years the wealth of the Ver¬ 
milion mountains was forgotten. 

“ The possibilities of the situation, however, 
had made a deep impression on a Duluth 
banker, George C. Stone. Curiously enough, 
it was the panic of 1873, which forced his bank 
to close its doors, that inspired him with the 
idea of seeking a new fortune from the Ver¬ 
milion wilds. He endeavored to promote a 
company for the construction of a railroad from 
the ranges to the coast, and two years later 
persuaded an elderly millionaire, by the name 
of Charlemagne Tower, living in Pottstown, 
Pennsylvania, to finance the undertaking. Prob¬ 
ably he would not have succeeded, and the 
world would have been deprived of the Ver¬ 
milion wealth for another ten years, had not 
Tower’s daughter been in love with a young 
mining engineer, R. H. Lee. 

“ 4 Why not build the railroad and put your 
new son-in-law in charge of it?’ urged Stuntz. 
His argument won. Twenty-two men were 
sent into the wilds to stake out claims, and 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 277 


the building of a railroad from Two Harbors 
back into the interior was started. Every 
mile of construction work cost a small for¬ 
tune. Before it was half completed, Tower 
had paid out more than a million dollars. 
The second half of the line cost another mil¬ 
lion, and before operation could begin the 
mines had to be opened up and expensive ma¬ 
chinery installed. Tower spent three millions 
and a half, and still there was no prospect 
of returns from his investment. And then 
came another panic, sweeping a hundred banks 
into a collapse. Tower saw his millions gone, 
and himself threatened with ruin. 

“ 6 Five hundred thousand dollars more, and 
we will make it!’ cried Stone, still optimistic. 
Tower decided to risk it. He sacrificed his last 
securities, and threw another half-million into 
what was called the ‘Minnesota sink hole/ 
In a few months the first ore train from the 
mines crawled down the crooked track to the 
dock at Two Harbors. Success had come at 
last. At the end of two years, a syndicate, 
headed by Rockefeller, offered Tower eight 
million dollars for his property — just double 
what it had cost him. He accepted, giving the 


278 


CINDERS 


dauntless Stone, who had made his wilderness- 
dream come true, four hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars as his share of the profits. To-day Two 
Harbors boasts the best-equipped ore docks in 
the world. 

“ And now comes the story of Mesaba, the last 
and the greatest of the American iron ranges. 
A few years before the Civil War, a woodsman 
by the name of Merritt emigrated from the 
state of New York with his wife and four sons 
to Duluth, fired by the stories of ‘ fool’s gold.’ 
He found no gold, but was wise enough to 
know the value of the red iron ore which he 
discovered instead, and to teach this value to 
his boys. When they grew to manhood, the 
four brothers, Leonidas, Alfred, Andrew, and 
Cassius, followed in their father’s steps as 
prospectors and woodsmen, wandering through 
northern Minnesota like later-day ‘Leather- 
stockings.’ In spite of their love for outdoor 
adventure, their business sense was not di¬ 
minished, and their knowledge of timber lands 
gradually made them wealthy men. In the 
early part of the eighties, they located their 
first iron mine on the famous Mesaba range. 
Later three cousins joined them, and the 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 279 


seven surveyed and mapped practically the 
entire range. Duluth laughed at their, stories 
of iron deposits, however, and when they 
sought permission to make that city the lake 
terminal of the Mesaba range they were 
promptly refused. The nearest lake port remain¬ 
ing lay between Duluth and Winnipeg, and to 
reach it from the mines meant the construction 
of fifty miles of railroad. Nothing daunted, 
however, the seven went to work, laying a large 
part of the track themselves when their capital 
gave out. In 1892 docks were built on the 
lake, the mines were opened, and the first 
train-load of ore was sent to the coast. But the 
Merritts were not fated to enjoy their success. 
The panic of 1893 swept them into bank¬ 
ruptcy, and the control of the Mesaba range 
passed into the hands of Rockefeller and James 
J. Hill. 

“A Mesaba iron mine is one the world’s 
wonders. There are no sunken shafts, no 
long, winding caverns and subways, no stoop¬ 
shouldered miners burrowing into the earth by 
the light of a sickly torch. For the most part, 
the ore lies just under the surface, sometimes 
hardly hidden by a foot of loose soil. Its 


280 


CINDERS 


average depth underground will not exceed 
fifty feet. One body of ore is two and a half 
miles long, half a mile wide, and from one 
hundred to four hundred feet thick. The 
thickest deposit is nearly five hundred feet 
through — a great mass of solid iron ore, 
dwarfing our tallest skyscrapers. There are 
five of these treasure pits, producing each year 
eighteen million dollars’ worth of ore. In 
twenty years the Mesaba ranges have added 
more than a quarter of a billion dollars to the 
world’s wealth. 

“The Mesaba miner is a man with a steam 
shovel. Eight workmen are assigned to one 
shovel, and under favorable conditions they 
can load more ore in one hour than five hundred 
men can bring to the surface in a day from 
the deeper ‘rock’ mines. At every swing 
of the steam shovel’s huge arm five tons of 
ore drop into a waiting steel car. The arm 
swings twice a minute. In five minutes the 
car is loaded to capacity, and another takes 
its place. When twenty cars are full, a one 
hundred-and-thirty-ton locomotive starts with 
them on the eighty-mile journey through the 
Minnesota woods to the Lake Superior shore. 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 281 


Two hundred and fifty drills are in operation 
on the Mesaba ranges, constantly seeking new 
locations — drills costing from fifteen hundred 
to four thousand dollars apiece. Iron mining 
is not all profit, even under the most favoring 
conditions. 

“When Minnesota ore was discovered, part 
of the land belonged to the state, part to the 
public-school fund, and part to the lumbermen, 
who had bought the ground as timber invest¬ 
ments. The latter realized more from the 
royalties of the mines than from the sale of 
the timber, and this after they had abandoned 
the land as worthless. Amazing tales are told 
of old deeds and leases of deserted lumber 
territories which proved to be the titles to 
large fortunes. The penniless widow of a 
Duluth lumberman was clearing out a dusty 
desk of her husband when she discovered a 
time-yellowed lease in a bottom drawer. The 
possession of that lease brought her an income 
of forty thousand dollars a year from ore 
mines on the property. The average royalty 
from an iron mine is twenty-five cents a ton. 
The public-school system of Minnesota has 
received over sixteen million dollars from the 


282 


CINDERS 


leasing of its ore lands, deeded to the purposes 
of public education in the early days of the 
state. Fifteen mines are paying a royalty 
to the schools. Every swing of their steam 
shovels brings one dollar and a quarter to the 
service of education. 

“This income is not due, however, to wise 
statesmanship. Quite the contrary. When 
Minnesota joined the union, the school au¬ 
thorities, in pressing need of funds, clamored 
for a share of the public lands. 

“‘We will give you ten sections,’ generously 
answered the legislature. 

“ When the deeds were examined, it was found 
that the ten sections were in the heart of an 
unexplored wilderness, apparently of as little 
value as though they had been staked out at 
the bottom of Lake Superior. It took fifty 
years for the point of the joke to be appre¬ 
ciated. 

“The Superior ore mines are the last and the 
most wonderful of the world’s great mineral 
discoveries. Experts say that at the present 
rate of consumption their product will be 
exhausted in another half-century. The same 
prophecy, however, was made with equal con- 


HOMER FORDHAM REBELS 283 


viction fifty years ago, and the mines are pro¬ 
ducing to-day more than ever. 

“The discovery of Lake Superior ore changed 
the industrial map of the United States. It 
has opened up a new territory as large as 
France. It has built up eight railroads, a 
dozen busy towns, and the largest commercial 
fleet in the world. This last statement gives 
us another astonishing angle of the iron and 
steel industry. 

“Only twenty-five years ago the first steel 
ore boat was launched on the Great Lakes. 
To-day there is a fleet of four hundred of these 
vessels. The Suez Canal, the highway be¬ 
tween Europe and the Orient, has only one- 
third the tonnage of the ‘ Soo ’ Canal — and 
two thirds of this traffic is supplied by the 
iron ore of the Minnesota wilderness. A modern 
ore freighter carries a cargo of from seven 
to twelve thousand tons. It is loaded in 
ninety minutes, and unloaded and ready for 
its return trip, if necessary, in four hours. 
In the operation of the ore boats, you can see a 
fifty-ton car of ore picked up as easily as though 
it were a box of candy, and tilted until its 
contents go whirling and roaring into the 


284 


CINDERS 


vessel’s hold. You can see the largest bridge 
crane ever erected, which can pick up or put 
down anything from a coal scuttle to a loco¬ 
motive at any spot within an area of seven 
acres and a half. It weighs more than an 
army of five thousand men, and yet it obeys the 
slightest touch of its operator’s hand as easily 
as a boy’s bicycle.” 

Dan Reynolds finished his story with a 
little apologetic laugh. 

“You ought to know better, youngster, than 
to start me on Steel. I am just like a war vet¬ 
eran. I don’t know where to stop when I get 
to 'reminiscing.’ I beg your pardon, Master 
Homer!” 

“Beg my pardon?” repeated Homer. “Why, 
I have had one of the bulliest evenings I have 
ever had. I believe you know as much about 
Steel as the governor — and that is a compli¬ 
ment.” 

Dan’s face flushed. 

“I reckon, Master Homer, that you are a 
chip of the old block, after all.” 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 
The Foiled Plot 

GREAT industrial plant, like a great mili¬ 
tary camp, has its peculiar sources of under¬ 
ground information. Perhaps this is due not so 
much to individual curiosity as to a community 
interest. For days one of the principal topics 
of conversation at the American steel plant 
had been the installation of a new, improved 
series of rollers in the rail mill. The erection 
of the new machinery had taken several weeks, 
and, when the date approached for its first 
test, the result was awaited with keen specu¬ 
lation, not only in the rail mill, but in the other 
departments of the establishment. 

On the day following the visit of Homer 
Fordham, Dan Reynolds informed Eric that 
the test of the rollers was to take place that 
evening, and that he had secured permission 
from the foreman of the rail mill for them to 
be present. 

-You will have just about time to go home 


286 


CINDERS 


for your supper,” he said. “I will wait for you 
over at the mill. If the test is a success, I 
think you will see something well worth the 
trip.” 

“I’ll be on hand,” Eric promised enthusias¬ 
tically. 

He would have been a very much astonished 
youth had he known that neither he nor Dan 
Reynolds was destined to be present at the 
test, and that at the moment it was in prog¬ 
ress there was to be nothing farther from 
their thoughts than the new rollers of the rail 
mill. 

Relieved to find his mother much improved, 
Eric hurriedly changed his clothes, ate a hasty 
supper, and was back at the plant just as the 
clock was striking eight. It was a clear, frosty 
night, and the bracing wind, blowing in from 
Lake Michigan, and his brisk walk brought 
an exhilarating glow to his blood, which made 
him survey the grimy buildings of the plant 
almost gayly as he passed through the gate. 

The plant presented nearly as great a scene 
of activity as during the day. The smoke rolled 
in a great dark mass against the sky, with the 
wavering tongues of fire from the Bessemer 


THE FOILED PLOT 


287 


converters showing vividly against the shadows. 
A crimson canopy enveloped the row of blast 
furnaces almost as deep and widespread as the 
glow from a burning building. Only the clang 
and din from the lines of track were subdued, 
although during the rush seasons even night 
did not diminish the activity of the flat cars 
and engines. 

Eric was rounding the billet mill, with his 
eyes already scanning the yards for a glimpse of 
Dan Reynolds, when the dark figure of a man 
a short distance ahead of him caught his at¬ 
tention. He would have probably hurried 
by without a thought of the incident had the 
figure not paused at the end of a row of slag 
cars. As it chanced, an acetylene torch had 
been thrust into the ground at this point 
for switching purposes. Even as Eric was turn¬ 
ing away, the shifting light of the torch fell 
full upon the man. Although the other leaped 
back instinctively into the shadow of the cars, 
and made a movement to pull his dark cap 
down over his eyes, the illumination * had 
been sufficient to show his identity. It was 
Walters. 

Eric huddled back against the side of the 


288 


CINDERS 


billet mill. He saw that he had not been ob¬ 
served. Indeed, it was doubtful that, even had 
Walters noticed him, he would not have been 
recognized in the shadows. For a moment the 
lad considered the situation. What was the 
purpose that had brought Walters back to the 
plant? It was obvious that he had not secured 
employment on one of the night shifts, and it 
was equally apparent that, whatever his errand, 
he was not desirous of being recognized. In 
fact, his whole manner was that of a man 
taking pains to escape observation. Eric was 
not given long, however, for speculations. 
As he strained his eyes toward the flat cars, 
he saw Walters slip from the opposite side, 
glance quickly about him, and then run di¬ 
agonally across the yard. 

Without a second thought, Eric sprang 
to the line of flat cars, and, bending as low as 
possible, darted along their length. When he 
reached the last one, he saw that Walters had 
disappeared around a building ahead, that was 
used as a shipping warehouse. The yard was 
deserted. The man, of course, might be waiting 
in concealment to ascertain if he was being 
followed; but the chances were that he was con- 


THE FOILED PLOT 


289 


tinuing to his destination, wherever that might 
be, without a pause. Eric decided to risk it, 
and, leaping boldly out from the shadow of 
the cars, shaped his course for the warehouse. 

As he first rounded the building, the boy 
fancied that he had lost the chase. And then 
he again sighted Walters. Had he been a 
moment later, he would have missed him com¬ 
pletely. The man had paused before a small 
tool shed, and was apparently rapping softly 
on its door. Even as Eric caught the outlines 
of his figure in the darkness, the door opened 
and closed almost instantly behind him. 

Eric crouched at the corner of the warehouse, 
waiting. But no further sign of life came 
from the tool house. There was not even a 
flicker of light from its window. Had he not 
been certain of what he had seen, he would 
have been tempted to the conclusion that in the 
shadows he had mistaken Walters’ destination. 
There could be no doubt, however, that the 
man not only had entered the building, but that 
he had been expected by at least one companion, 
who had preceded him, and who had opened the 
door at his knock. What could be the errand 
requiring such a measure of stealth and secrecy? 


290 


CINDERS 


And if the tool house had been selected only 
as a rendezvous, why would not a point outside 
the plant have answered the purpose much 
better, and with less fear of discovery? 

It did not need the increasing numbness in 
his limbs to warn Eric that time was passing. 
And it was clear that from his present position 
he was making no progress in the solution of 
the mystery. Should he summon Dan Rey¬ 
nolds? Or would the delay in finding the 
foreman and bringing him to the scene give the 
occupants of the tool house time to complete 
their errand and disappear? Eric drew the 
collar of his coat over his neck, gave a final 
glance around the yard, and decided to under¬ 
take a closer investigation of the affair alone. 
Thirty yards brought him to the tool house, as 
dark and silent on a nearer view as it had ap¬ 
peared before. He had made a complete 
circuit of the little building before he discovered 
the slightest evidence that it was occupied. 
On the side farthest from the warehouse was a 
small crack between the rough boards, and 
through this for an instant flashed a shaft of 
light. 

He could no longer doubt the importance of 


THE FOILED PLOT 


291 


his chance discovery, or the sinister purpose 
of the occupants of the tool house. It was 
true that he could not fathom their errand, 
or the manner in which they proposed to ac¬ 
complish it, but the investigation of the details 
could wait. Whatever was being planned, 
he must find help at once. 

The billet mill was only a short distance from 
the gate of the plant. Just across the street was 
a drug store, with a public telephone booth. 
If Mr. Radcliff had returned from St. Louis, he 
could probably reach him at his home, or at 
least learn his whereabouts. And the young 
superintendent would grasp the importance of 
the situation without delay. 

Eric drummed on the edge of the instrument 
in a growing fever of impatience as he waited 
for his connection, and then came the mo¬ 
notonous voice of Central, “ Your number doesn’t 
answer! There doesn’t seem to be anyone at 
home!” 

Eric dropped the receiver with something 
like a groan. But his eyes lighted the next 
moment. Why not call Mr. Rogers? He ran 
through the directory for the home address of 
the company’s detective, only to be disappointed 


292 


CINDERS 


again. He did not know that the detective was 
a bachelor and lived at a hotel. His hand was 
on the door of the telephone booth when he 
turned back with a last inspiration. Perhaps 
he could locate Mr. Rogers at the Fordham 
home. 

The voice of a woman servant answered his 
connection, and took his message with a stolid¬ 
ness which made him fume. 

“It is Mr. Rogers, the detective, that I 
want!” he almost snapped finally. “Get him 
at once! Tell him that the matter is very 
urgent!” 

He opened the door of the booth far enough 
to see the clock. The hands pointed to twenty 
minutes past eight. Although he had no means 
of judging his time exactly, he felt that at least 
ten minutes had elapsed since he left the tool 
house. And Walters’ patience might be ex¬ 
hausted and the conspirators already carrying 
out their plot! A click sounded at the other 
end of the telephone wire, and he bent down 
as he caught a voice. It was Homer Fordham. 

“Hellow, Eric! What’s up? I can’t find 
Mr. Rogers!” 

“We must find him! Tell him that it has to 


THE FOILED PLOT 293 

do with the same person that we saw at ‘The 
Oaks,’ and that it is a matter of minutes!” 

Over the wire he could hear Homer gasp 
excitedly. 

“I’ll do my best! Where are you?” 

“Have Mr. Rogers come down to the plant! 
I will be watching for him at the gate!” 

Without waiting for Homer to comment 
farther, Eric dropped the receiver. He did 
not dare to wait longer. And perhaps he could 
locate Dan Reynolds while he was waiting. 
If Homer found the detective without delay, 
Mr. Rogers could easily reach the plant in an 
automobile in a quarter of an hour. But would 
Walters and his companion wait a quarter of 
an hour? 

Eric’s luck turned as he ran back to the 
mills. Almost the first person he saw as he 
reentered the gate was the foreman, puffing 
contentedly on his pipe. 

“You are late, youngster! When I didn’t 
find you at the slag mill, I thought I would 
walk over—” 

Dan’s sentence finished incoherently as Eric 
seized his arm and gasped out his story. The 
tool house was still apparently deserted when 


294 


CINDERS 


the lad and the foreman cautiously approached 
it, Eric completing his narrative on the way. 
Dan was drawing back doubtfully when the 
youth pointed to a shaft of light emanating 
from the crack in the rear. 

“I guess you are right, youngster, after all! 
I was beginning to think that —” 

“Oh, you will find that I haven’t been dream¬ 
ing!” Evidently the occupants had not yet 
seen fit to leave their retreat. 

“I expect you had better leave me here on 
watch while you wait for Mr. Rogers at the 
gate. If he comes at once, he ought to be here 
in the next ten minutes.” 

Eric nodded. 

“Have you any idea what’s on foot?” 

“I think I could give a pretty good guess, but 
I’ll wait until I see whether my theory is right. 
Unless I am very much mistaken, your friend 
Walters is going to meet with a disagreeable 
surprise.” 

To Eric, pacing restlessly back and forth 
in front of the gate, the following quarter of 
an hour was one of the longest of his life. 
Twice he turned with the idea of rejoining 
Dan Reynolds and giving up the detective. 


THE FOILED PLOT 


29 5 


It was only the reflection that the foreman 
could take care of an emergency, and that 
Mr. Rogers would be at a complete loss where 
to find him, and consequently in ignorance of 
the situation when he should arrive, that kept 
him to his post. When finally the blast of an 
automobile horn echoed down the street and the 
yellow lights of a motor car swept into view, 
he sprang to its side before it had slowed to a 
halt. But Mr. Rogers was not there. 

From the rear seat sprang a slight, boyish 
figure, and Homer Fordham caught his hand 
excitedly. 

“I couldn’t find Mr. Rogers, Eric. I wasted 
ten minutes trying to locate him. But I — I 
thought I would come anyway. I knew there 
was something up, and, and — please don’t 
send me back! Say I can stay, won’t you?” 

Eric laughed dubiously. 

“I am afraid there is no help for it now. 
If only we are not too late —” 

With Homer panting at his side, he ran 
back through the gate toward the billet mill, 
his doubts and fears rushing on him with ten¬ 
fold force in his disappointment. If Walters 
and his companion had started on their errand, 


296 


CINDERS 


Dan Reynolds, outnumbered two to one, could 
not hope to check them. And he would have 
no chance to summon assistance. Walters’ 
purpose would be carried out with no one to 
prevent it. 

But the locality of the tool house showed no 
change since he had left it, and as they reached 
the building Dan rose up from the shadows 
at its side, with his hand to his lips, and a nod 
that the situation was unaltered. 

Before Eric could explain Mr. Rogers’ ab¬ 
sence, however, the door opened and a head 
was thrust cautiously out. The head be¬ 
longed to Walters. Listening for a moment, 
he called softly over his shoulder, and the next 
moment was joined by the other occupant of 
the building. The two did not even pause to 
close the door as they struck off toward the 
billet mill. It was evident that their measures 
of watchfulness were induced more from caution 
than from any suspicion that they were being 
watched. 

“Let them get on ahead,” whispered Dan. 
“I think I know where they are bound, and we 
can reach it by a short cut.” 

The two figures ahead were already lost in 


THE FOILED PLOT 


297 


the darkness. Apparently indifferent to the 
fact, the foreman branched off at right 
angles to the course the pair were taking. It 
was not until they reached the open-hearth 
mill that Eric recognized their surroundings, 
and then, as they continued on into the yard at 
its end, he realized suddenly that they were 
heading toward the experiment station. 

The next moment Dan Reynolds pulled him 
down into the shadows. Just ahead of them, 
so near that it seemed as though discovery must 
be inevitable, appeared Walters and his com¬ 
panion. 

“I thought I was right!” chuckled Dan 
softly. 

“But the experiment station is empty,” 
said Eric. “There is no one there.” 

“You are mistaken. ‘Silent’ Battles came 
down to work late this afternoon, and I doubt 
if he has gone back.” 

The pair ahead had paused before the “House 
of Secrets” and were whispering earnestly to¬ 
gether. They evidently reached a decision, and 
Walters stepped forward to the door and raised 
his hand as though to knock. 

Dan Reynolds straightened. “I reckon if 


298 


CINDERS 


we are going to be in at the finish, we had 
better move a little closer. ” 

They heard Walters’ knuckles beat a low 
tattoo on the door, and, after a silence, repeat 
it. What followed, Eric always recalled as the 
tag end of a confused nightmare. 

He saw the door open slightly, and the gaunt 
face of “Silent” Battles peer out questioningly. 
Walters spoke a low sentence, his hand reached 
into his pocket, and Battles opened the door 
farther. 

Then, from behind Walters’ shoulder, some¬ 
thing gleamed cold and bright in the rays of 
the swinging light in the experiment house. It 
was a revolver, in the hands of his companion, 
and it was leveled toward the man in the 
doorway. 

“We want those chromium plans!” said a 
curt voice. 

From this point on, events for Eric blurred 
into a jumble. He heard Dan Reynolds give 
a quick shout of encouragement, saw him leap 
forward, and jumped on at his side. Benson 
turned with a cry of dismay, but his confed¬ 
erate, observing the smallness of the reinforce¬ 
ments, sprang through the doorway into the 


THE FOILED PLOT 


299 


building as Dan and Eric, with Homer Ford- 
ham close behind, pitched forward after him. 

Eric sprang to his feet to see Walters turn like 
an animal at bay and grapple with Dan Rey¬ 
nolds. Back against a long table “Silent” 
Battles was squirming, with his injured shoulder 
twisted cruelly, and the hand of Walters’ 
confederate gripping his collar. Even as the 
boy grasped the situation, the man drew back 
the hand holding his revolver, reversed it with 
a quick movement, and raised its butt. 

With a cry of warning, Eric dashed wildly 
between the two, with his arm flung up. The 
assailant of “Silent” Battles changed the 
direction of his blow with a snarl. The boy 
had a wild glimpse of descending steel above 
his eyes, a sudden torrent of hot, dancing sparks 
whirled around him, and through them he 
pitched forward into darkness. 


/ 


CHAPTER TWENTY 

Several Matters are Explained 

TT'RIC opened his eyes with a strange sense 
of ease. Something gratefully cool and soft 
was wrapped about his throbbing temples. 
He raised his hand curiously to investigate, 
and saw that it was an ice-cold bandage, and 
that he was lying in bed in a strange room, 
with cool white curtains at the windows. 

He closed his eyes wonderingly; but the next 
moment they flew open in a stare which pene¬ 
trated even his dulled senses. He could not 
be dreaming — it was too real! And he could 
not mistake the touch of her hand! His mother 
was bending over him, and smiling with the 
old-time smile he had not seen on her face 
for weeks. 

“Mumsy! Mumsy!” he gasped. 

“Yes, Eric!” she said softly. And the old- 
time smile flooded her face again. 

“But — but where am I? What has hap¬ 
pened?” 


SEVERAL MATTERS EXPLAINED 301 

“You are in the Mercy Hospital. You have 
been here for three days, and you have been 
very, very ill. ” 

Something like two hours later President 
Fordham of the American Steel Company rose 
from his desk in his library, and with a cordial¬ 
ity which some of his associates would have 
viewed with wonder extended his hand to a 
visitor. It was “Silent” Battles, with his 
gaunt face still pale from the effect of the blast¬ 
furnace accident, and his left arm bound 
awkwardly in its heavy sling. 

“I am giving myself the pleasure of telling 
you the news first,” said Mr. Fordham with a 
smile toward Superintendent Radcliff, the third 
occupant of the room. “I have a telegram 
from our attorney at Washington announcing 
that he has filed the plans of your invention at 
the patent office, and that it bids fair to be a 
record-breaker. 5 5 

Mr. Radcliff stepped forward impulsively. 

“Let me congratulate you! I knew it would 
win! For the first time, by your new tungsten 
and chromium process, the world will have a 
steel that is practically impervious to heat — 


302 


CINDERS 


a steel that will bore through even steel itself. 
The Trust was playing for an even larger stake 
than it dreamed when it tried to steal your 
plans. 

“By the way, what of Walters?” asked Presi¬ 
dent Fordham. 

“He and his companion made a full confes¬ 
sion, after they had time to realize that they 
were caught red-handed. They had been 
laying their plans for weeks ever since Walters’ 
first failure. In the tool shed they had in¬ 
stalled one of the new-style telephone dicto¬ 
graphs, connecting with the private wire from 
the experiment station to my office, and knew 
just the right moment to strike — and even 
the pass-word that Battles and I had agreed 
upon to open the door in event of an emergency. 
If it hadn’t been for young Raymond —” 

President Fordham nodded. “I think that 
the company should do something for that 
young man, Mr. Battles, and I have been 
trying to devise a practical way to do it.” 

He stopped at the sudden change of expres¬ 
sion in the other’s face. “Don’t you agree with 
me?” 

“To tell the truth, Mr. Fordham, I hardly 


SEVERAL MATTERS EXPLAINED 303 


think it will be necessary. I fancy that the 
company has been forestalled.” 

4 4 Forestalled ? Just what do you mean ? 5 ’ 

As the president and superintendent stared 
at the inventor, they were conscious that a cu¬ 
rious change, almost imperceptible at first glance, 
had come over him. His gaunt, pale face was 
flushing, a new light had crept into his eyes, 
and his lips were twitching in an effort to pre¬ 
vent a chuckle. 

“No, Mr. Fordham,” he repeated, “I hardly 
think it will be necessary. Eric is already 
taken care of.” 

The president and Mr. Radcliff exchanged 
a sudden glance of comprehension, and the 
former suddenly fumbled in his desk. When 
his hand emerged, it held his check-book. 
Evidently the same thought was in the minds 
of both of them. “Silent” Battles intended 
to show his gratitude to the lad who had saved 
both his life and his invention by arranging 
for his future. 

“Mr. Radcliff and I have gone over the 
details of your invention, Mr. Battles,” said 
President Fordham, “and I am prepared to 
offer you a bonus and a ten per cent royalty 


304 


CINDERS 


for all rights on behalf of the American Steel 
Company.” He held his pen suspended. “If 
that is satisfactory, will you kindly give me 
your initials so that I can make out the check?” 

Again “Silent” Rattles’ lips twitched, but 
this time he was unable to prevent a chuckle, 
which prolonged itself, and bubbled down 
over his face until it was literally transformed. 

“While I am giving you my initials, I think 
it would be just as well if I gave you my real 
name.” He leaned across the desk, waited a 
moment, and then spoke a low sentence which 
made the two men before him straighten 
bolt upright and stare at him in a bewilder¬ 
ment that would have been ludicrous under 
other circumstances. Mr. Radcliff was the first 
to recover himself. Springing across the room, 
he caught the other’s hand again. 

“You really mean that Eric Raymond is —” 

“Silent” Battles’ chuckle broke out once 
more, and this time he made no effort to check it. 

“I mean just that!” He hesitated, and then 
drew up a chair. “ Since you are the first persons, 
with the exception of one other, to hear the 
truth, perhaps it would be as well if I gave you 
the details of the story.” 


SEVERAL MATTERS EXPLAINED 305 


The telephone on Mr. Fordham’s desk jingled 
a persistent summons, but the president sat 
gazing at the spare figure of the inventor, ap¬ 
parently too absorbed to answer. 

“Ten years ago,” began “Silent” Battles, 
“a locomotive factory in Schenectady, New 
York, sent two of its agents to South America 
to open a branch office in Peru. A few months 
after their arrival, one of the couple was re¬ 
ported killed in the collapse of a new railroad 
trestle, for which the company was supplying 
the equipment, in the Peruvian mountains — 
and almost simultaneously it was discovered 
that the books of the concern at Lima showed 
a shortage for a large amount. 

“The survivor of the two agents wrote the 
facts to the home office, wrote that the facts 
pointed to but one conclusion •— that his com¬ 
panion was a thief, and that his sudden death 
had hastened the discovery of his crime. His 
statement, supported by the affidavit of an 
expert accountant, was accepted without ques¬ 
tion, and the dead man’s widow was called to 
the office and told that her husband had been 
killed, and that he was a proven defaulter. 
Crushed under the weight of this double tra- 


306 


CINDERS 


gedy, she heroically took up the struggle with the 
world for the sake of her two children, for since 
her husband’s departure a baby girl had come 
into their home. 

“But the man reported killed in the trestle 
accident was still living. He had been hurled 
to the bottom of a rocky gulch, and was picked 
up by the native workman as lifeless. It so 
happened that an Indian doctor, almost a 
hermit in his habits, had wandered into camp 
on the night before the disaster, and through 
his efforts the stricken man was gradually 
nursed back to health. When he recovered he 
was like a man with a sound body and a dead 
brain, dead at least so far as it referred to the 
details of his previous life. 

“And when his nurse died, in a sudden 
attack of jungle fever, seemingly the last chain 
connecting him with his old life was snapped. 
For years he lived as one of the natives, wander¬ 
ing through the tropics from Peru to Panama. 
Something of his old mechanical ingenuity 
was left to him almost as an echo of what had 
been, and one day he fell in with a mechanical 
engineer, and with him conceived the idea of 
an invention in the steel industry which brought 


SEVERAL MATTERS EXPLAINED 307 


him to the United States as the best market 
for his plan, and thence to the American Steel 
Company.” 

Superintendent Radcliff was walking back 
and forth across the floor in his excitement. 

“And you — you are that man?” he de¬ 
manded excitedly. 

“Silent” Battles nodded. “I am that man! 
I am Ralph Raymond, come back from the 
grave with my lost memory found!” 

“But how did you learn the truth?” 

“I told you that you are the first to 
hear my story, with the exception of one other 
person. That person is my wife. A few weeks 
ago she received a letter from my partner in 
the South American venture. It was a death¬ 
bed confession, exonerating me of the charge 
of embezzlement, and acknowledging his own 
guilt. Even then, of course, she had no idea that 
I was alive. It was a newspaper picture of 
myself in the account of the blast-furnace acci¬ 
dent which gave her the first impression of 
the real facts. 

“The supposition, however, seemed so weird, 
so fantastic, that it was not until she met me at 
the hospital after the blow Eric received in the 


308 


CINDERS 


fight at the experiment station that either of 
us realized the truth, and—” 

The insistent tinkle of the telephone rang 
out again. President Fordham took the re¬ 
ceiver impatiently, but the next minute turned, 
with even his dignity showing signs of succumb¬ 
ing to the general excitement. 

“This is from the Mercy Hospital. Eric 
Raymond is convalescent!” 

“Silent” Battles was at the door almost be¬ 
fore the sentence was finished. 

“I will see you later, gentlemen. I am going 
to my — my boy!” 

An hour afterward a nurse knocked at the 
door of Eric Raymond’s room in the hospital. 
Hearing no response, she ventured to open it 
softly. For a minute she hesitated as she saw 
the group at her patient’s bed — Mrs. Ray¬ 
mond, who might have been either laughing, 
or crying, or both; a tall, gaunt man at her 
side, with his left arm in a sling, and the lad 
under the sheets, who had insisted in raising 
himself to his elbow. 

“I beg pardon,” she coughed apologetically, 
“but there is a young gentleman downstairs 
who says —” 


SEVERAL MATTERS EXPLAINED 309 


“I just couldn’t help it, Eric!” called a boyish 
voice excitedly from the hall. “When I heard 
that you had come around, I couldn’t wait!” 

Into the room staggered Homer Fordham, 
his arms filled with a huge bouquet of flowers, 
a basket of fruit, and three of his most treasured 
books. 

Eric flushed awkwardly as he laid a hand on 
the arm of the gaunt man at his bedside. 

“You are just in time. Let me introduce 
you to my — father!” 

“Oh, I knew all about that before you did,” 
laughed Homer. “Dad and Mr. Radcliff told 
me the news at the house. But I say, Eric, 
I have bully news on my part. What do you 
think? The governor has decided to let me 
stay here and study, and when I am old enough 
he is to send me to the Carnegie Technical 
School at Pittsburg!” 

“Why, that is where father says he is going 
to send me!” cried Eric. 

“He is?” echoed Homer, pumping the other’s 
hand up and down in the exuberance of his 
enthusiasm. “We will be steel men together 
then, won’t we — Cinders?” 

















































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